Forgiveness is giving up the hope that you will ever have a better past.  Let me repeat that . .

“Our lives can indeed be seen as a process of becoming familiar with death, as a school in the art of dying. I do not mean this in a morbid way. On the contrary, when we see life constantly relativized by death, we can enjoy it for what it is: a free gift.” —Henri Nouwen, A Letter of Consolation

I measure every Grief I meet
With narrow, probing, Eyes —
I wonder if It weighs like Mine —
Or has an Easier size.

– Emily Dickinson (from 561)

“There is no grief like the grief that does not speak.”

–Longfellow

“Sorrow is no longer the islands but the sea.”

–Nicholas Wolterstorff, Lament for a Son

If I could only catch a glimpse of how Vincent is doing up there in heaven. Even my atheist friends tell me that’s where he is. So it’s unanimous; Vincent is safe and healthy somewhere in heaven. “Catastrophic loss by definition precludes recovery. It will transform us or destroy us, but it will never leave us the same. There is no going back to the past, which is gone forever, only going ahead to the future, which has yet to be discovered. Whatever that future is, it will, and must, include the pain of the past with it.”

—Jerry Sittser, A Grace Disguised

“I almost prefer the moments of agony. These are at least clean and honest. But the bath of self-pity, the wallow, the loathsome sticky-sweet pleasure of indulging it—that disgusts me.”

–C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

“When we gather now there’s always someone missing, his absence as present as our presence, his silence as loud as our speech.”

–Nicholas Wolterstorff, Lament for a Son