Kathleen Murphy

“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.”
― Max Porter, Grief Is the Thing with Feathers

“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.”
― Max Porter, Grief Is the Thing with Feathers

“It seemed both proper and at the same time deeply unfair that so much of life was left to chance.”
― Claire Keegan, Small Things Like These

“She was not busy dying, and there is no detritus of care, she was simply busy living, and then she was gone. She”
― Max Porter, Grief Is the Thing with Feathers