Status Updates From Letters of Note: Grief

I’m afraid it’s not what you hoped for from me and perhaps that’s why I haven’t written

"How strange: one can sucessfully resist tears and "hold" oneself very well in the hardest hours. But then, someone makes a friendly gesture behind a window, one notices a blossom which was just a bud yesterday - or a letter slips from a drawer - and everything falls apart.

[Colette a Marguerite Moreno, 11 anos após a morte da mãe]

The sense of desolation (though of thankfulness too, of course) is unspeakably increased by those last days together, when he wanted me so close & held me so fast, that all the flame & glory came back, in the cold shadow of death & parting. Oh, my dear, I sometimes feel I am too old to live through such hours & take up the daily routine again.

[E. Wharton sobre Walter Berry, "o amor da minha vida", aos 65 anos]