Emma Grey > Quotes

“That’s the problem with grief. It’s not packed tidily in a box that you can bring out in appropriate, private moments and sort through. It’s threaded inconveniently through everything.”
― Emma Grey, The Last Love Note

“Boundaries are something you put around yourself. When someone else puts them around you, it's called a prison.”
― Emma Grey, Pictures of You

“I've learned that love outlives death. It holds steady through despair. It won't fade, even as time elapses and distance increases and your world shifts.”
― Emma Grey, The Last Love Note

“How long is it reasonable to drag out your recovery from grief until you're expected to get your act together again?
Or maybe that's where I'm going wrong. You don't recover from it. There is no "healed" moment. You just absorb it into your new life, somehow, and go from there.”
― Emma Grey, The Last Love Note

“What I wouldn't give for someone - I don't care who - just to step into my life and take the reins, for even a second.”
― Emma Grey, The Last Love Note

“She's one of the golden threads running through each of our lives. Hope, in human form.”
― Emma Grey, The Last Love Note

“You may never stop loving the one you lost. But you can still find love again.”
― Emma Grey, The Last Love Note

“His absence will be the eternal backdrop to everything else I do until the day I die.”
― Emma Grey, The Last Love Note

“No. I know grief. You don't forget details. It's the opposite. Details torment you. They swirl through your mind in a relentless, agonizing loop until you think you'll go mad. The phone call you let go to voicemail because you were too busy reading a book. The offhandedness of that last text message. The endless, haunting, unchangeable dance of all that was said and unsaid as life pushes you further from the opportunity you lost to make things right.”
― Emma Grey, Pictures of You

“I know grief. You don’t forget details. It’s the opposite. Details torment you. They swirl through your mind in a relentless, agonizing loop until you think you’ll go mad.”
― Emma Grey, Pictures of You

“He stays dead," I whisper ... "He keeps on not coming back," I continue, as if discovering this truth for the first time.”
― Emma Grey, The Last Love Note

“There was so much help in the beginning. They say grief changes your address book and it surprised me who stepped up and how.”
― Emma Grey, The Last Love Note

“This is not a fork in the road, I realize. It’s just the road. There’s no Story A and Story B. There’s one, imperfect, meandering direction.”
― Emma Grey, The Last Love Note

“If I stay very still and very open, our energies feel so close it's as if we can almost touch in this place where love is infinite. Limitless.”
― Emma Grey, The Last Love Note

“No amount of sadness is going to bring your husband back. Did he want you to be happy when he was alive?"
"Blissfully."
She smiles. "Don't take that away from him, then, in death.”
― Emma Grey, The Last Love Note

“A shadow passes across Hugh’s face. “I know how debilitating it is to carry big problems into work every day and still function.”
― Emma Grey, The Last Love Note

“Maybe you need an adult gap year. Sell up, travel, write … see what the world offers you.” I can’t deny even the idea of it stirs something new in me. I need adventure. New horizons. Different challenges that don’t revolve around watching a husband die.”
― Emma Grey, The Last Love Note

“The longer I stay here, chasing the ghost of my former life, the shorter the next chapter of my life will become.”
― Emma Grey, The Last Love Note

“Maybe because, even in loss, there’s so much more to life.”
― Emma Grey, The Last Love Note

“I read that a widow's only job in the first twelve months is to keep herself alive, and I understand the achievement.”
― Emma Grey, The Last Love Note

“My current self shakes her head at the naïveté of my Teen Self. Life was going to get so much bigger and more anxiety-inducing than how badly you do in algebra, girl.…”
― Emma Grey, The Last Love Note

“I miss you," I breathe ...”
― Emma Grey, The Last Love Note

“Is my spark ever going to return?”
― Emma Grey, The Last Love Note

“But at some point people have to go back to their own lives. You can't expect them to sit with you forever or be there for every leaking tap or flat tire.”
― Emma Grey, The Last Love Note

“Evie, he had you on a pedestal so high at the start and then pelted you with so many rocks, you couldn’t find a way to clamber down.”
― Emma Grey, Pictures of You

“The point is, it’s your life. Your decision. Your timing. You might resist it now, but you’ll know the moment when it comes, and not before. And then you’ll realize the bigger risk is not taking a risk.”
― Emma Grey, The Last Love Note

“I feel this immense responsibility to stay alive.”
― Emma Grey, The Last Love Note

“I've learned that love outlives death. It holds steady through despair. It won't fade, even as time elapses and distance increases and your world shifts.”
― Emma Grey, The Last Love Note

“But there are some moments that are too private for public consumption. And some unspoken conversations that need to stay that way.”
― Emma Grey, Pictures of You

“You can grieve a breakup, too, and grieve someone’s absence from your life, but when someone dies, it’s soul-deep. An impossible-to-grasp, endless absence not just from you, but from the entire world. You won’t run into them by accident in the supermarket. You can’t stalk them on social media. Your best friend won’t furnish you with gossip about their next steps. There’s just nothing. Forever.”
― Emma Grey, The Last Love Note