Emily

“All over now. He is either in joy or nothingness.
(So why grieve?
The worst of it, for him, is over.)
Because I loved him so and am in the habit of loving him and that love must take the form of fussing and worry and doing.”
― George Saunders, Lincoln in the Bardo

“Was that what it was really like to be alive? The feeling of darkness dragging you forward?

How could they live with it? And yet they did, and even seemed to find enjoyment in it, when surely the only sensible course would be to despair. Amazing. To feel you were a tiny living thing, sandwiched between two cliffs of darkness. How could they stand to be alive?”
― Terry Pratchett, Reaper Man

“Though on the surface it seemed every person was different, this was not true.

At the core of each lay suffering; our eventual end, the many losses we must experience on the way to that end.

We must try to see one another in this way.

As suffering, limited beings --

Perennially outmatched by circumstance, inadequately endowed with compensatory graces.”
― George Saunders, Lincoln in the Bardo

“I was in error when I saw him as fixed and stable and thought I would have him forever. He was never fixed, nor stable, but always just a passing, temporary energy-burst.”
― George Saunders, Lincoln in the Bardo