Feather Grief Quotes

Moving on, as a concept, is for stupid people, because any sensible person knows grief is a long-term project. I refuse to rush. The pain that is thrust upon us let no man slow or speed or fix.

(on grief) And you do come out of it, that’s true. After a year, after five. But you don’t come out of it like a train coming out of a tunnel, bursting through the downs into sunshine and that swift, rattling descent to the Channel; you come out of it as a gull comes out of an oil-slick. You are tarred and feathered for life.

Grief is a swallow,' he said. 'One day you wake up and you think it's gone, but it's only migrated to some other place, warming its feathers. Sooner or later, it will return and perch in your heart again.

Again. I beg everything again.

Ghosts do not haunt, they regress. Just as when you need to go to sleep you think of trees or lawns, you are taking instant symbolic refuge in a ready-made iconography of early safety and satisfaction. That exact place is where ghosts go.

I remember being scared that something must, surely, go wrong, if we were this happy, her and me, in the early days, when our love was settling into the shape of our lives like cake mixture reaching the corners of the tin as it swells and bakes.

[Grief] is everything. It is the fabric of selfhood, and beautifully chaotic. It shares mathematical characteristics with many natural forms.

Moving on, as a concept, is for stupid people, because any sensible person knows grief is a long-term project.

And the boys were behind me, a tide-wall of laughter and yelling, hugging my legs, tripping and grabbing, leaping, spinning, stumbling, roaring, shrieking and the boys shouted I LOVE YOU I LOVE YOU I LOVE YOU and their voice was the life and song of their mother. Unfinished. Beautiful. Everything.

For a souvenir, for a warning, for a lick of night in the morning.

I missed her so much that I wanted to build a hundred-foot memorial to her with my bare hands. I wanted to see her sitting in a vast stone chair in Hyde Park, enjoying her view. Everybody passing could comprehend how much I miss her. How physical my missing is. I miss her so much it is a vast golden prince, a concert hall, a thousand trees, a lake, nine thousand buses, a million cars, twenty million birds and more. The whole city is my missing her. Eugh,

She was not busy dying, and there is no detritus of care, she was simply busy living, and then she was gone. She

I plucked one feather from my hood and left it on his forehead, for, his, head. For a souvenir, for a warning, for a lick of night in the morning. For a little break in the mourning.

This feather stirs; she lives! if it be so, it is a chance which does redeem all sorrows that ever I have felt.

She was beaten to death, I once told some boys at a party. Oh shit mate, they said. I lie about how you died, I whispered to Mum. I would do the same, she whispered back.

Grief is a swallow,” he said. “One day you wake up and you think it's gone, but it's only migrated to some other place, warming its feathers. Sooner or later, it will return and perch in your heart again.

Grief felt fourth-dimensional, abstract, faintly familiar. I was cold.

MAN I would be done grieving? BIRD    No, not at all. You were done being hopeless. Grieving is something you’re still doing, and something you don’t need a crow for.

Perfect devices: doctors, ghosts and crows. We can do things other characters can't, like eat sorrow, un-birth secrets and have theatrical battles with language and God.

And then our Mum and Dad were in love and they were truly dry-stone strong and durable and people speak of ease and joy and spontaneity and the fact that their two smells became one smell, our smell. Us.

Once upon a time there were two boys who purposefully misremembered things about their father. It made them feel better if ever they forgot things about their mother.

I stood there feeling the lightness of my bones, knowing now this was not only lack of sleep that had transformed my bones into feathers, but my body's recognition that soon I would be leaving this place I had inhabited for one year, this place made entirely of grief.

This is the rotten core, the Grünewald, the nails in the hands, the needle in the arm, the trauma, the bomb, the thing after which we cannot ever write poems, the slammed door, the in-principio-erat-verbum. Very What-the-fuck. Very blood-sport. Very university historical. But don’t stop looking.

We will never fight again, our lovely, quick, template-ready arguments. Our delicate cross-stitch of bickers. The house becomes a physical encyclopedia of no-longer hers, which shocks and shocks and is the principal difference between our house and a house where illness has worked away. Ill people, in their last day on Earth, do not leave notes stuck to bottles of red wine saying ‘OH NO YOU DON’T COCK-CHEEK’. She was not busy dying, and there is no detritus of care, she was simply busy living, and then she was gone. She won’t ever use (make-up, turmeric, hairbrush, thesaurus). She will never finish (Patricia Highsmith novel, peanut butter, lip balm). And I will never shop for green Virago Classics for her birthday. I will stop finding her hairs. I will stop hearing her breathing.

I remember a story about an Irish warrior who killed his son by mistake but when he realised he didn’t mind that much because it served the son right.

They offer me a space on the sofa next to them and the pain of them being so naturally kind is like appendicitis. I need to double over and hold myself because they are so kind and keep regenerating and recharging their kindness without any input from me. CROW

She wears her grief like a coat of feathers too heavy for flight. He crossed out heavy, wrote weighted instead, then decided that was downright pretentious and put heavy back in.

A howling sorry which is yes which is thank you which is onwards.

What good is a crow to a pack of grieving humans? A huddle. A throb.              A sore.                          A plug.                                       A gape.                                                    A load. A gap. So, yes. I do eat baby rabbits, plunder nests, swallow filth, cheat death, mock the starving homeless, misdirect, misinform. Oi, stab it! A bloody load of time wasted. But I care, deeply. I find humans dull except in grief.

...we were different boys, we were brave new boys without a Mum. So when he told us what happened I don't know what my brother was thinking but I was thinking this: Where are the fire engines? Where is the noise and clamour of an event like this? Where are the strangers going out of their way to help, screaming, flinging bits of emergency glow-in-the-dark equipment at us to try and settle us and save us? There should be men in helmets speaking a new and dramatic language of crisis. There should be horrible levels of noise, completely foreign and inappropriate for our cosy London flat.

Perhaps if Crow taught him anything it was a constant balancing. For want of a less dirty word: faith.

The sound of her voice was stinging, like a moon-dragged starvation surging into every hopeless raw vacant pore, undoing, exquisite undoing.

The whole city is my missing her.

But I care, deeply. I find humans dull except in grief. There are very few in health, disaster, famine, atrocity, splendour or normality that interest me (interest ME!) but the motherless children do. Motherless children are pure crow. For a sentimental bird it is ripe, rich and delicious to raid such a nest. DAD

I felt it would be years before the knotted-string dream of other people’s performances of woe for my dead wife would thin enough for me to see any black space again,

Long live imagined animals, the need, the capacity.

I flung the duvet off and flailed and swung and spat at you but you were elsewhere and I had to fall asleep crushed between what you'd said and what I thought.

the boys shouted I LOVE YOU I LOVE YOU I LOVE YOU and their voice was the life and song of their mother.

Part of love is preparing for death... Afterwards comes the madness. And then the loneliness... [People say] you'll come out of it... And you do come out of it, that's true. But you don't come out of it like a train coming out of a tunnel, bursting through the Downs into sunshine and that swift, rattling descent to the Channel; you come out of it as a gull comes out of an oil slick; you are tarred and feathered for life.

It is everything. It is the fabric of selfhood, and beautifully chaotic. It shares mathematical characteristics with many natural forms.

I am your Ted's song-legend, Crow of the death-chill, please. The God-eating, trash-licking, word-murdering, carcass-desecrating math-bomb motherfucker, and all that.

We will never fight again, our lovely, quick, template-ready arguments. Our delicate cross-stitch of bickers.

Grief should be aired, not buried.

Just as when you need to go to sleep you think of trees or lawns, you are taking instant symbolic refuge in a ready-made iconography of early safety and satisfaction. That exact place is where ghosts go.’ I

After the advent of laser surgery but before puberty, before self-consciousness, before secondary school, before money, time or gender got their teeth in. Before language was a trap, when it was a maze. Before

Grief is a swallow,’ he said. ‘One day you wake up and you think it’s gone, but it’s only migrated to some other place, warming its feathers. Sooner or later, it will return and perch in your heart again.’ One

Nothing truly ends. It changes. Change is eternal. In being changed, you too are eternal. You are here in this moving moment and in being here, you are also forever. A fire becomes ash, which becomes earth. Sadness becomes joy, sometimes within the same cry. Birds molt feathers, then grow new ones for winter. Love becomes grief. Grief become memory. Wounds become scars. Doing becomes being. Pain becomes strength. Noon becomes night. Rain becomes vapor and then rain again. Hope becomes despair then hope again. A pear ripens, falls, transforms as it is tasted. A caterpillar disappears into its silk wrapped cocoon and things go dark, and then…

A Match If love were what the rose is, And I were like the leaf, Our lives would grow together In sad or singing weather, Blown fields or flowerful closes, Green pasture or gray grief; If love were what the rose is, And I were like the leaf. If I were what the words are, And love were like the tune, With double sound and single Delight our lips would mingle, With kisses glad as birds are That get sweet rain at noon; If I were what the words are, And love were like the tune. If you were life, my darling, And I your love were death, We'd shine and snow together Ere March made sweet the weather With daffodil and starling And hours of fruitful breath; If you were life, my darling, And I your love were death. If you were thrall to sorrow, And I were page to joy, We'd play for lives and seasons With loving looks and treasons And tears of night and morrow And laughs of maid and boy; If you were thrall to sorrow, And I were page to joy. If you were April's lady, And I were lord in May, We'd throw with leaves for hours And draw for days with flowers, Till day like night were shady And night were bright like day; If you were April's lady, And I were lord in May. If you were queen of pleasure, And I were king of pain, We'd hunt down love together, Pluck out his flying-feather, And teach his feet a measure, And find his mouth a rein; If you were queen of pleasure, And I were king of pain.

For a souvenir, for a warning, for a lick of night in the morning. For a little break in the mourning. I will give you something to think about, I whispered. He woke up and didn't see me against the blackness of his trauma.

You don’t know your origin tales, your biological truth (accident), your deaths (mosquito bites, mostly), your lives (denial, cheerfully).

We seem to take it in ten-year turns to be defined by it, sizeable chunks of cracking on, then great sink-holes of melancholy.

She was not busy dying, and there is no detritus of care, she was simply busy living, and then she was gone.

But I care, deeply. I find humans dull except in grief.

Grief is a swallow, One day you wake up and you think it's gone, but it's only migrated to some other place, warming its feathers. Sooner or later, it will return and perch in your heart again.

she is gone and I can think what I like. She would approve, because we were always over-analytical, cynical, probably disloyal, puzzled. Dinner party post-mortem bitches with kind intentions. Hypocrites. Friends.

There is a fascinating constant exchange between Crow’s natural self and his civilised self, between the scavenger and the philosopher, the goddess of complete being and the black stain, between Crow and his birdness. It seems to me to be the self-same exchange between mourning and living, then and now. I could learn a lot from him.

Grief is not something you know if you grow up wearing feathers with a Charlie Chaplin boyfriend, a love-child papoose, a witch baby, a Dirk and a Duck, a Slinkster Dog, and a movie to dance in. You can feel sad and worse when your dad moves to another city, when an old lady dies, or when your boyfriend goes away. But grief is different. Weetzie’s heart cringed in her like a dying animal. It was as if someone had stuck a needle full of poison into her heart. She moved like a sleepwalker. She was the girl in the fairy tale sleeping in a prison of thorns and roses.

I missed her so much that I wanted to build a hundred-foot memorial to her with my bare hands. I wanted to see her sitting in a vast stone chair in Hyde Park, enjoying her view. Everybody passing could comprehend how much I miss her. How physical my missing is. I miss her so much it is a vast golden prince, a concert hall, a thousand trees, a lake, nine thousand buses, a million cars, twenty million birds and more. The whole city is my missing her.

She told us that men were rarely truly kind, but they were often funny, which is better. 'You do well top prepare yourselves for disappointment' she said, 'in your dealings with men. Women are on the whole much stronger, usually cleverer' she said, 'but less funny, which is a shame. Have babies, if you can' she said 'because you'll be good at it.

Before language was a trap, when it was a maze.

LOVE YOU I LOVE YOU I LOVE YOU and their voice was the life and song of their mother. Unfinished. Beautiful. Everything.

Just be kind and look out for your brother.

I need to double over and hold myself because they are so kind and keep regenerating and recharging their kindness without any input from me.

I refused to lose a wife and gain chores, so I accepted help.

We were smack bang in the middle, years from the finish, taking nothing for granted. I

Caught baffled by the perplexing slow-release of sadness for ever and ever and ever. Which

I’ve drawn her unpicked, ribs splayed stretched like a xylophone with the dead birds playing tunes on her bones.

There’s a feather on my pillow.

Oh, I said, we move. WE FUCKING HURTLE THROUGH SPACE LIKE THREE MAGNIFICENT BRAKE-FAILED BANGERS, thank you, Geoffrey, and send my love to Jean.

Moving on, as a concept, was mooted, a year or two after, by friendly men on behalf of their wellintentioned wives. Women who loved us. Women who knew me as a child.

He could learn a lot from me. That’s why I’m here.

The friends and family who had been hanging around being kind had gone home to their own lives. When the children went to bed the flat had no meaning, nothing moved.

Grief from the war casts a shadow that at times was dense and at others seemed as pale as a length of gauze, but it was never gone.

One boy lost the treasured lunchbox note from his mother saying 'good luck'. He cried, alone in his room, then threw a toy car at his father's framed Coltrane poster. It smashed. He felt better. The father dutifully swept up all the glass and understood.

She asked me for a favor, to clip the flight feathers of her wings to the quick, and even in my frustration I was shocked. I asked her why she would do such a thing. “For grief, she said. For sorrow. When the world has changed so completely, why should I remain the same? I cannot remain. I cannot stay.

It may seem bad, Geoffrey, but you’ll come out of it. I’m not taking your grief lightly; it’s just that I’ve seen enough of life to know that you’ll come out of it.’ The words you’ve said yourself while scribbling a prescription (No, Mrs Blank, you could take them all and they wouldn’t kill you). And you do come out of it, that’s true. After a year, after five. But you don’t come out of it like a train coming out of a tunnel, bursting through the Downs into sunshine and that swift, rattling descent to the Channel; you come out of it as a gull comes out of an oil-slick. You are tarred and feathered for life.

Best way for me to describe it, grief is like a suitcase. You have to get out of the bed every single day, pick it up, and take it with you wherever you go. Some days it feels like it’s filled with rocks, other days, light as a feather.” Her open hand reaches for mine. “But you don’t have to carry it alone.

The graces are restless today. They pweet and muss, shuddering their wings so that the feathers stick out at defensive angles. I feel that restlessness too. When the sea is fractious like this – when it chutters and schwaks against the moorings, when it won't talk but only mumbles – it's difficult to think.

When she dies, you are not at first surprised. Part of love is preparing for death. You feel confirmed in your love when she dies. You got it right. This is part of it all. Afterward comes the madness. And then the loneliness: not the spectacular solitude you had anticipated, not the interesting martyrdom of widowhood, but just loneliness. You expect something almost geological-- vertigo in a shelving canyon -- but it's not like that; it's just misery as regular as a job. What do we doctors say? I'm deeply sorry, Mrs Blank; there will of course be a period of mourning but rest assured you will come out of it; two of these each evening, I would suggest; perhaps a new interst, Mrs Blank; can maintenance, formation dancing?; don't worry, six months will see you back on the roundabout; come and see me again any time; oh nurse, when she calls, just give her this repeat will you, no I don't need to see her, well it's not her that's dead is it, look on the bright side. What did she say her name was? And then it happens to you. There's no glory in it. Mourning is full of time; nothing but time.... you should eat stuffed sow's heart. I might yet have to fall back on this remedy. I've tried drink, but what does that do? Drink makes you drunk, that's all it's ever been able to do. Work, they say, cures everything. It doesn't; often, it doesn't even induce tiredness: the nearest you get to it is a neurotic lethargy. And there is always time. Have some more time. Take your time. Extra time. Time on your hands. Other people think you want to talk. 'Do you want to talk about Ellen?' they ask, hinting that they won't be embarrassed if you break down. Sometimes you talk, sometimes you don't; it makes little difference. The word aren't the right ones; or rather, the right words don't exist. 'Language is like a cracked kettle on which we beat out tunes for bears to dance to, while all the time we long to move the stars to pity.' You talk, and you find the language of bereavement foolishly inadequate. You seem to be talking about other people's griefs. I loved her; we were happy; I miss her. She didn't love me; we were unhappy; I miss her. There is a limited choice of prayers on offer: gabble the syllables. And you do come out of it, that's true. After a year, after five. But your don't come out of it like a train coming out of a tunnel, bursting through the Downs into sunshine and that swift, rattling descent to the Channel; you come out of it as a gull comes out of an oil-slick. You are tarred and feathered for life.

I remember her pretending to like watching award winning ceremonies more than she actually did because it surprised me, but then I let her know that such-and-such ceremony was on and we would have to sit through it. Le's go to bed, she said. We don't really know who any of these people are. Winners, I said. Every stinking ugly vacuous cunt-faced last one of them. And off we went to bed.

Itches and Burs There once was a mother-and-daughterly pair Who both had an itch just beneath their long hair. Each had a bur with the prickles attached Under a belt at the mid of her back. “Oh, daughter, please scratch at my itch, will you not? And pluck out the bur—I would thank you a lot!” “I can’t,” said the daughter, “My own bur does sting. And try as I may I can’t reach the darn thing!” “Oh pain!” groaned the daughter. The mom cried, “Oh drat!” As each strained to reach her own bur at her back. “It prickles like needles! It tickles like feathers!” But easing the scratch was a fruitless endeavor. The daughter about gave a sigh of despair When all of a sudden her prick was not there. The itch too was gone with some scritches and scrapes Applied by old fingers in arthritic shape. The daughter, so grateful to feel such relief, Turned ’round to her mother and plucked out her grief. She scratched her mom’s itch just as she had done hers. Now neither has itches and neither has burs.

We all know water promises weight to carry our grief, pulsing, further and still further away. The cave is something else entirely. Its promises are the sharp moments of sex we insist frighten us when anyone asks us about love, but which we secretly desire above all faint and feathered touch. The prince always knows this and turns again and again away from his beloved when she becomes too tender. He is looking for the opening where the egg rests unharmed. Yes, memory is velocity solidified and molded into something with hooves and breath. We must be careful where we let these creatures run—to granite or sea.

She didn’t really like classical music and there was no Vince to whisper in her ear and tell her what was beautiful about it. His descriptions were so clear. Handel was all scarlet ostrich feathers and silk ribbons fluttering in the wind, great silver trays blazing with candlelight. Wagner was trees creaking and silk ribbons fluttering in the wind, great silver trays blazing with candlelight. Wagner was trees creaking and snapping in the storm, foam running up the foot of a cliff, waves sweeping round rocks, black peaks reaching to the sky. Vince was no longer there, it was only music with no introduction and no commentary.

William sees it all happen again. The pain is not in the event. The subjection to it and his powerless state each time is where his anguish lies. He is unable to influence the situation, despite his desire. He sees the nest outside his house. He sees the baby bird that fell. The mother bird cries frantically for her lost chick. William knows as he approaches the chick that if he touches it his scent will linger, and the mother will reject it. Circling around the fallen creature William hopes it will flee from him, back toward the tree from which it had fallen. His presence only intensifies the creature’s fear. It speeds to his left, heading for the street. Again William tries to flank the bird, but it is too frightened to return to the nest. The chick’s mother wails vainly. William walks into the street trying to herd the bird to safety. The stop light a block away has just turned green. The driver accelerates. William moves from the car’s path and it runs over the bird. The momentum from its wake lifts the bird to the underside of the car, breaking its neck, but not killing it. William watches the bird roll helplessly. It is silent for a second, before it begins to whimper. Its contorted head dangles limply from its body. The noise is tragic. The bird’s mother hears the chick’s pain, but nothing can be done. She laments. A second speeder crushes the chick, leaving only a wet feathered spot in the street. As the cars continue to pass, only one bird is heard. A mother’s grief falls deafly on an unconcerned world.

When I woke up a man in a green beret with a big feather poking out of it was leaning over me. I must be hallucinating, I thought. I blinked again but he didn’t go away. Then this immaculate, clipped British accent addressed me. “How are you feeling, soldier?” It was the colonel in charge of British Military Advisory Team (BMAT) in southern Africa. He was here to check on my progress. “We’ll be flying you back to the UK soon,” he said, smiling. “Hang on in there, trooper.” The colonel was exceptionally kind, and I have never forgotten that. He went beyond the call of duty to look out for me and get me repatriated as soon as possible--after all, we were in a country not known for its hospital niceties. The flight to the UK was a bit of a blur, spent sprawled across three seats in the back of a plane. I had been stretchered across the tarmac in the heat of the African sun, feeling desperate and alone. I couldn’t stop crying whenever no one was looking. Look at yourself, Bear. Look at yourself. Yep, you are screwed. And then I zonked out. An ambulance met me at Heathrow, and eventually, at my parents’ insistence, I was driven home. I had nowhere else to go. Both my mum and dad looked exhausted from worry; and on top of my physical pain I also felt gut-wrenchingly guilty for causing such grief to them. None of this was in the game plan for my life. I had been hit hard, broadside and from left field, in a way I could never have imagined. Things like this just didn’t happen to me. I was always the lucky kid. But rogue balls from left field can often be the making of us.

Although your mind lies beyond birth and death, this illusory body does die, so practice while remembering death […] The guru said: Human beings don't think of death. A man's life is like a pile of chaff or a feather on a mountain pass. The demon Lord of Death comes suddenly, like an avalanche or a storm. Disturbing emotions are like straw catching fire. Your life-span decreases like the shadows of the setting sun […] This life is crossed in a brief moment, but samsara is endless. What will you do in the next life? Also, the length of this life is not guaranteed: the time of death lies uncertain, and like a convict taken to the scaffold, you draw closer to death with each step. All beings are impermanent and die. Haven't you heard about the people who died in the past? Haven't you seen any of your relatives die? Don't you notice that we grow old? And still, rather than practicing the Dharma, you forget about past grief. Chased by temporary circumstances, tied by the rope of dualistic fixation, exhausted by the river of desire, caught in the web of samsaric existence, held captive by the tight shackles of karmic ripening - even when the tidings of the Dharma reach you, you still cling to diversions and remain careless. Is it that death doesn't happen to people like you? I pity all sentient beings who think in this way! The guru said: When you keep in mind the misery of dying. it becomes clear that all activities are causes for suffering. so give them up. Cut all ties, even the smallest, and meditate in solitude on the remedy of emptiness. Nothing whatsoever will help you at the time of death, so practice the Dharma since it is your best companion...

So I walked into their room in the navy blue middle of the night in summertime and listened to them breathing.

This is what we know of Dad. He was a quiet boy. He drifted off on family walks, he doodled and drew and his feelings were easily hurt by rough kids at school.

Later, you told me what your mother had said. How your father, the farmer, rose up slowly. You told me how your mother wailed on the other end of the phone, grieving her loss and complaining about the basketball of a goitre perched on her shoulder. She told you, your father walked onto the veranda and saw a chook floating ten feet above the ground. The chook didn’t flap a feather and just sat there brooding, swaying in the breeze.

A kis családban sok volt az egyenlítés és az alku.

Kate looked to the kitchen stairs that led up to the second floor where her four-year-old son was sound asleep, then shook her head. She hadn’t told him the news yet. She didn’t want him hearing it from the neighbors. “No, but thanks. I need to be with him if he wakes. We’ll be fine.” “I’m always here for you, Kate. Remember that. If you need anything, I’m just across the street.” “Thanks.” Kate forced a smile she didn’t feel. With a quick hug, Mindy made her way to the front of the house. When the heavy mahogany door clicked shut, Kate turned and surveyed the empty house. She was alone. Totally alone. No car would be pulling into the drive in the middle of the night. Jake wouldn’t come bounding through the door, apologizing for missing yet another dinner. She wouldn’t see his face or feel his arms around her again. It didn’t matter if he’d been a lousy husband. He’d been her husband. And now he was gone. From now on, it would just be her and Reed. Shaky lips blew out a long sigh. She tamped down the grief that wanted to pour over her again. Even though it was close to midnight, she knew there was no way she’d be able to drift into a slumber, peaceful or otherwise. Making her way into Jake’s office, she rubbed the chill from her arms, then sank into the chair behind his desk, letting the butter-soft leather cushion her aching body. With trembling fingers, her hand feathered the dark wood in front of her. Her gaze washed over the room. A tall bookshelf

I remember my first date, aged fifteen, with a girl called Hilary Gidding. A coin fell down the back of the cinema seats and we both slipped our hands into the tight fuzzy gap of the chairs past popcorn kernels and sticky ticket stubs and our hands met, stroking the carpet feeling for the coin, and it was electric. The wrist being clamped by upholstery, the darkness, the accident, the lovely dirt of public spaces.

But I care, deeply. I find humans dull except in grief. There are very few in health, disaster, famine, atrocity, splendour or normality that interest me (interest ME!) but the motherless children do. Motherless children are pure crow. For a sentimental bird it is ripe, rich and delicious to raid such a nest.

I was so full of missing her that I felt my heart would splinter into a thousand tiny pieces, but I found comfort in the thought of them together up there in the shade of those old trees, overlooking the bay. It tempered my grief ever so slightly, like a feather come to lodge in a dark place.

Grief, as in everything, should be experienced in moderation. There is a time to grieve heavily but then there is a time to set it aside and become happy in life again.

She wears her grief like a coat of feathers too heavy for flight.

variety of other wise saws sprang to Stephen’s indignant mind – words and feathers are carried off by the wind; as is the wedding, so is the cake; do not speak Arabic in the house of the Moor; pleasures pass but sorrows stay; love, grief and money cannot be concealed

Once we had ventured from one side of the New World to another, and the white breathing population migrated across, too—we were the first explorers—a large group of us met to divide things up, for better governing of our own population.” “Were there any Native American vampires here when you came? Hey, were you on the Leif Ericson expedition?” “No, not my generation. Oddly enough, there were very few Native American vampires. And the ones that were here were different in several ways.” Now, that was pretty interesting, but I could tell Eric wasn’t going to stop and fill in the blanks. “At that first national meeting, about three hundred years ago, there were many disagreements.” Eric looked very, very serious. “No, really?” Vampires arguing? I could yawn. And he didn’t appreciate my sarcasm, either. He raised blond eyebrows, as if to say, “Can I go on and get to the point? Or are you going to give me grief?” I spread my hands: “Keep on going.” “Instead of dividing the country the way humans would, we included some of the north and some of the south in every division. We thought it would keep the cross-representation going. So the easternmost division, which is mostly the coastal states, is called Moshup Clan, for the Native American mythical figure, and its symbol is a whale.” Okay, maybe I looked a little glazed at that point. “Look it up on the Internet,” Eric said impatiently. “Our clan—the states that met in Rhodes compose this one—is Amun, a god from the Egyptian system, and our symbol is a feather, because Amun wore a feathered headdress. Do you remember that we all wore little feather pins there?” Ah. No. I shook my head. “Well, it was a busy summit,” Eric conceded.

Grief felt fourth-dimensional, abstract, faintly familiar.

Ik weet nog dat ik bang was dat er haast wel iets mis móést gaan als we zo gelukkig waren, zij en ik, in de begintijd, toen onze liefde zich naar de vorm van onze levens voegde zoals cakebeslag in de hoeken van het bakblik kruipt terwijl het rijst en bakt.