Grief

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life (1915)

  But they are not useful merely to individuals; the fate of the clan as a whole is bound up with theirs. Their loss is a disaster; it is the greatest misfortune which can happen to the group.[331] Sometimes they leave the ertnatulunga, for example when they are loaned to other groups.[332] Then follows a veritable public mourning. For two weeks, the people of the totem weep and lament, covering their bodies with white clay just as they do when they have lost a relative.[333] And the churinga are not left at the free disposition of everybody; the ertnatulunga where they are kept is placed under the control of the chief of the group. It is true that each individual has special rights to some of them;[334] yet, though he is their proprietor in a sense, he cannot make use of them except with the consent and under the direction of the chief. It is a collective treasury; it is the sacred ark of the clan.[335] The devotion of which they are the object shows the high price that is attached to them. The respect with which they are handled is shown by the solemnity of the movements.[336] They are taken care of, they are greased, rubbed, polished, and when they are moved from one locality to another, it is in the midst of ceremonies which bear witness to the fact that this displacement is regarded as an act of the highest importance.[337]

• From Wild (2012)

  My mom had been dead a week when I kissed another man. And another a week after that. I only made out with them and the others that followed—vowing not to cross a sexual line that held some meaning to me—but still I knew I was wrong to cheat and lie. I felt trapped by my own inability to either leave Paul or stay true, so I waited for him to leave me, to go off to graduate school alone, though of course he refused. He deferred his admission for a year and we stayed in Minnesota so I could be near my family, though my nearness in the year that followed my mother’s death accomplished little. It turned out I wasn’t able to keep my family together. I wasn’t my mom. It was only after her death that I realized who she was: the apparently magical force at the center of our family who’d kept us all invisibly spinning in the powerful orbit around her. Without her, Eddie slowly became a stranger. Leif and Karen and I drifted into our own lives. Hard as I fought for it to be otherwise, finally I had to admit it too: without my mother, we weren’t what we’d been; we were four people floating separately among the flotsam of our grief, connected by only the thinnest rope. I never did make that Thanksgiving dinner. By the time Thanksgiving rolled around eight months after my mom died, my family was something I spoke of in the past tense. So when Paul and I finally moved to New York City a year after we had originally intended to, I was happy to go. There, I could have a fresh start. I would stop messing around with men. I would stop grieving so fiercely. I would stop raging over the family I used to have. I would be a writer who lived in New York City. I would walk around wearing cool boots and an adorable knitted hat. It didn’t go that way. I was who I was: the same woman who pulsed beneath the bruise of her old life, only now I was somewhere else.

• From Wild (2012)

  I clutched its mate to my chest like a baby, though of course it was futile. What is one boot without the other boot? It is nothing. It is useless, an orphan forevermore, and I could take no mercy on it. It was a big lug of a thing, of genuine heft, a brown leather Raichle boot with a red lace and silver metal fasts. I lifted it high and threw it with all my might and watched it fall into the lush trees and out of my life. I was alone. I was barefoot. I was twenty-six years old and an orphan too. An actual stray, a stranger had observed a couple of weeks before, when I’d told him my name and explained how very loose I was in the world. My father left my life when I was six. My mother died when I was twenty-two. In the wake of her death, my stepfather morphed from the person I considered my dad into a man I only occasionally recognized. My two siblings scattered in their grief, in spite of my efforts to hold us together, until I gave up and scattered as well. In the years before I pitched my boot over the edge of that mountain, I’d been pitching myself over the edge too. I’d ranged and roamed and railed—from Minnesota to New York to Oregon and all across the West—until at last I found myself, bootless, in the summer of 1995, not so much loose in the world as bound to it. It was a world I’d never been to and yet had known was there all along, one I’d staggered to in sorrow and confusion and fear and hope. A world I thought would both make me into the woman I knew I could become and turn me back into the girl I’d once been. A world that measured two feet wide and 2,663 miles long. A world called the Pacific Crest Trail.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  The martyrologies date from this period several legends, the germs of which, however, cannot now be clearly sifted from the additions of later poesy. The story of the destruction of the legio Thebaica is probably an exaggeration of the martyrdom of St. Mauritius, who was executed in Syria, as tribunus militum, with seventy soldiers, at the order of Maximin. The martyrdom of Barlaam, a plain, rustic Christian of remarkable constancy, and of Gordius, a centurion (who, however, was tortured and executed a few years later under Licinius, 314) has been eulogized by St. Basil. A maiden of thirteen years, St. Agnes, whose memory the Latin church has celebrated ever since the fourth century, was, according to tradition, brought in chains before the judgment-seat in Rome; was publicly exposed, and upon her steadfast confession put to the sword; but afterwards appeared to her grieving parents at her grave with a white lamb and a host of shining virgins from heaven, and said: "Mourn me no longer as dead, for ye see that I live. Rejoice with me, that I am forever united in heaven with the Saviour, whom on earth I loved with all my heart." Hence the lamb in the paintings of this saint; and hence the consecration of lambs in her church at Rome at her festival (Jan. 21), from whose wool the pallium of the archbishop is made. Agricola and Vitalis at Bologna, Gervasius and Protasius at Milan, whose bones were discovered in the time of Ambrose Janurius, bishop of Benevent, who became the patron saint of Naples, and astonishes the faithful by the annual miracle of the liquefaction of his blood, and the British St. Alban, who delivered himself to the authorities in the place of the priest he had concealed in his house, and converted his executioner, are said to have attained martyrdom under Diocletian.54 § 25. The Edicts of Toleration. A.D. 311–313. See Lit. in § 24, especially Keim, and Mason (Persecution of Diocletian, pp. 299 and 326 sqq.) This persecution was the last desperate struggle of Roman heathenism for its life. It was the crisis of utter extinction or absolute supremacy for each of the two religions. At the close of the contest the old Roman state religion was exhausted. Diocletian retired into private life in 305, under the curse of the Christians; he found greater pleasure in planting cabbages at Salona in his native Dalmatia, than in governing a vast empire, but his peace was disturbed by the tragical misfortunes of his wife and daughter, and in 313, when all the achievements of his reign were destroyed, he destroyed himself.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  This decision was much milder than might have been expected from a heathen emperor of the old Roman stamp. Tertullian charges it with self-contradiction, as both cruel and lenient, forbidding the search for Christians and yet commanding their punishment, thus declaring them innocent and guilty at the same time. But the emperor evidently proceeded on political principles, and thought that a transient and contagious enthusiasm, as Christianity in his judgment was, could be suppressed sooner by leaving it unnoticed, than by openly assailing it. He wished to ignore it as much as possible. But every day it forced itself more and more upon public attention, as it spread with the irresistible power of truth. This rescript might give occasion, according to the sentiment of governors, for extreme severity towards Christianity as a secret union and a religio illicita. Even the humane Pliny tells us that he applied the rack to tender women. Syria and Palestine suffered heavy persecutions in this reign. Symeon, bishop of Jerusalem, and, like his predecessor James, a kinsman of Jesus, was accused by fanatical Jews, and crucified A.D. 107, at the age of a hundred and twenty years. In the same year (or probably between 110 and 116) the distinguished bishop Ignatius of Antioch was condemned to death, transported to Rome, and thrown before wild beasts in the Colosseum. The story of his martyrdom has no doubt been much embellished, but it must have some foundation in fact, and is characteristic of the legendary martyrology of the ancient church.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  But the fanatics and foreign mercenaries would not even spare the dead. They decreed that his body should be quartered for treason and then burnt for heresy, according to the Roman and imperial law. The sheriff of Luzern executed the barbarous sentence. Zwingli’s ashes were mingled with the ashes of swine, and scattered to the four winds of heaven.289 The news of the disaster at Cappel spread terror among the citizens of Zürich. "Then," says Bullinger, "arose a loud and horrible cry of lamentation and tears, bewailing and groaning." On no one fell the sudden stroke with heavier weight than on the innocent widow of Zwingli: she had lost, on the same day, her husband, a son, a brother, a son-in-law, a brother-in-law, and her most intimate friends. She remained alone with her weeping little children, and submitted in pious resignation to the mysterious will of God. History is silent about her grief; but it has been vividly and touchingly described in the Zürich dialect by Martin Usteri in a poem for the tercentenary Reformation festival in Zürich (1819).290 Bullinger, Zwingli’s successor, took the afflicted widow into his house, and treated her as a member of his family. She survived her husband seven years, and died in peace. A few steps from the pear-tree where Zwingli breathed his last, on a slight elevation, in view of the old church and abbey of Cappel, of the Rigi, Pilatus, and the more distant snow-capped Alps, there arises a plain granite monument, erected in 1838, mainly by the exertions of Pastor Esslinger, with suitable Latin and German inscriptions.291 A few weeks after Zwingli, his friend Oecolampadius died peacefully in his home at Basel (Nov. 24, 1531). The enemies spread the rumor that he had committed suicide. They deemed it impossible that an arch-heretic could die a natural death.292 § 48. Reflections on the Disaster at Cappel. We need not wonder that the religious and political enemies of Zwingli interpreted the catastrophe at Cappel as a signal judgment of God and a punishment for heresy. It is the tendency of superstition in all ages to connect misfortune with a particular sin. Such an uncharitable interpretation of Providence is condemned by the example of Job, the fate of prophets, apostles, and martyrs, and the express rebuke of the disciples by our Saviour in the case of the man born blind (John 9:31). But it is found only too often among Christians. It is painful to record that Luther, the great champion of the liberty of conscience, under the influence of his mediaeval training, and unmindful of the adage, De mortuis nihil nisi bonum, surpassed even the most virulent Catholics in the abuse of Zwingli after his death. It is a sad commentary on the narrowness and intolerance of the Reformer.293

• From Wild (2012)

  And so we did, though the ashes of her body were not what I'd expected. They weren't like ashes from a wood fire, silky and fine as sand. They were like pale pebbles mixed with a gritty gray gravel. Some chunks were so large I could see clearly that they'd once been bones. […] When we'd finally laid down that tombstone and spread her ashes into the dirt, I hadn't spread them all. I'd kept a few of the largest chunks in my hand. I'd stood for a long while, not ready to release them to the earth. I didn't release them. I never ever would. I put her burnt bones into my mouth and swallowed them whole.

• From Wild (2012)

  I watched my mother. Outside the sun glinted off the sidewalks and the icy edges of the snow. It was Saint Patrick’s Day, and the nurses brought her a square block of green Jell-O that sat quivering on the table beside her. It would turn out to be the last full day of her life, and for most of it she held her eyes still and open, neither sleeping nor waking, intermittently lucid and hallucinatory. That evening I left her, though I didn’t want to. The nurses and doctors had told Eddie and me that this was it. I took that to mean she would die in a couple of weeks. I believed that people with cancer lingered. Karen and Paul would be driving up together from Minneapolis the next morning and my mother’s parents were due from Alabama in a couple of days, but Leif was still nowhere to be found. Eddie and I had called Leif’s friends and the parents of his friends, leaving pleading messages, asking him to call, but he hadn’t called. I decided to leave the hospital for one night so I could find him and bring him to the hospital once and for all. “I’ll be back in the morning,” I said to my mother. I looked over at Eddie, half lying on the little vinyl couch. “I’ll come back with Leif.” When she heard his name, she opened her eyes: blue and blazing, the same as they’d always been. In all this, they hadn’t changed. “How can you not be mad at him?” I asked her bitterly for perhaps the tenth time. “You can’t squeeze blood from a turnip,” she’d usually say. Or, “Cheryl, he’s only eighteen.” But this time she just gazed at me and said, “Honey,” the same as she had when I’d gotten angry about her socks. The same as she’d always done when she’d seen me suffer because I wanted something to be different than it was and she was trying to convince me with that single word that I must accept things as they were. “We’ll all be together tomorrow,” I said. “And then we’ll all stay here with you, okay? None of us will leave.” I reached through the tubes that were draped all around her and stroked her shoulder. “I love you,” I said, bending to kiss her cheek, though she fended me off, in too much pain to endure even a kiss. “Love,” she whispered, too weak to say the I and you. “Love,” she said again as I left her room. I rode the elevator and went out to the cold street and walked along the sidewalk. I passed a bar packed with people I could see through a big plate-glass window. They were all wearing shiny green paper hats and green shirts and green suspenders and drinking green beer. A man inside met my eye and pointed at me drunkenly, his face breaking into silent laughter.

• From Another Country (1962)

  Richard followed her into the kitchen and she put down her packages. She looked into his face. “What is it?” she asked. Then, after the instant in which she checked off all the things it wasn’t, “Rufus,” she said, suddenly, “you’ve got news about Rufus.” “Yes.” She watched the way a small vein in his forehead fluttered. “He’s dead, Cass. They found his body floating in the river.” She sat down at the kitchen table. “When?” “Sometime this morning.” “How long—how long ago—?” “A few days. They figured he must have jumped off the George Washington Bridge.” “My God,” she said. Then: “Who—?” “Vivaldo. He called. Just after you went out. Ida had called him.” “My God,” she said, again, “it’s going to kill that poor girl.” He paused. “Vivaldo sounded as though he’d just been kicked in the belly by a horse.” “Where is he?” “I tried to make him come here. But he was going uptown to the girl—Ida—I don’t know what good he can do.” “Well. He was much closer to Rufus than we were.” “Would you like a drink?” “Yes,” she said, “I think I’d like a drink.” She sat staring at the table. “I wonder if there was anything—we—anyone—could have done.” “No,” he said, pouring a little whiskey in a glass and setting it before her, “there was nothing anyone could have done. It was too late. He wanted to die.” She was silent, sipping the whiskey. She watched the way the sunlight fell on the table. Richard put his hand on her shoulder. “Don’t take it too hard, Cass. After all——” She remembered his face as it had been the last time she talked to him, the look in his eyes, and his smile when he asked Can I come to see you soon? How she wished, now, that she had stayed and talked to him a little longer. Perhaps—she sipped the whiskey, marveling that the children were so quiet. Tears filled her eyes and dropped slowly down her face, onto the table. “It’s a dirty, rotten shame,” she said. “It’s a terrible, terrible, terrible thing.” “He was heading that way,” said Richard, mildly, “nothing, no one, could have stopped him.” “How do we know that?” Cass asked. “Oh, honey, you know what he’s been like these last few months. We hardly ever saw him but everybody knew.” Knew what? she wanted to ask. Just what in hell did everybody know? But she dried her eyes and stood up. “Vivaldo tried like hell to stop what he was doing to Leona. And if he could have stopped him from doing that—well, then, maybe he could have stopped this, too.” That’s true, she thought, and looked at Richard, who, under stress, could always surprise her into taking his measure again. “I was very fond of him,” she said, helplessly. “There was something very sweet in him.” He looked at her with a faint smile. “Well, I guess you’re just naturally nicer than I am.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  It is astonishing what an amount of interest this question of Calvin’s return excited throughout Switzerland and Germany. It was generally felt that the fate of Geneva depended on Calvin, and that the fate of evangelical religion in France and Italy depended on Geneva. Letters arrived from individuals and corporations. Farel continued to thunder, and reproached the Strassburgers for keeping Calvin back. He was indignant at Calvin’s delay. "Will you wait," he wrote him, "till the stones call thee?" § 95. Calvin’s Return to Geneva. 1541. In the middle of June, Calvin left Regensburg, before the close of the Colloquy, much to the regret of Melanchthon; and after attending to his affairs in Strassburg, he set out for Switzerland. The Genevese sent Eustace Vincent, a mounted herald, to escort him, and voted thirty-six écus for expenses (Aug. 26). The Strassburgers requested him to retain his right of citizenship, and the annual revenues of a prebend, which they had assigned him as the salary of his theological professorship. "He gladly accepted," says Beza, "the former mark of respect, but could never be induced to accept the latter, since the care of riches occupied his mind the least of anything." Bucer, in the name of the pastors of Strassburg, gave him a letter to the Syndics and Council of Geneva, Sept. 1, 1541, in which he says: "Now he comes at last, Calvin, that elect and incomparable instrument of God, to whom no other in our age may be compared, if at all there can be the question of another alongside of him." He added that such a highly favored man Strassburg could only spare for a season, on condition of his certain return.616 The Council of Strassburg wrote to the Council of Geneva on the same day, expressing the hope that Calvin may soon return to them for the benefit of the Church universal.617 The Senate of Geneva, in a letter of thanks (Sept. 17, 1541), expressed the determination to keep Calvin permanently in their city, where he could be as useful to the Church universal as at Strassburg.618 Calvin visited his friends in Basel, who affectionately commended him to Bern and Geneva (Sept. 4).619 Bern was not very favorable to Calvin and the clerical ascendency in Geneva, but gave him a safe-conduct through her territory. At Soleure (Solothurn) he learned that Farel was deposed, without a trial, by the magistracy of Neuchâtel, because he had attacked a person of rank from the pulpit for scandalous conduct. He, therefore, turned from the direct route, and spent some days with his friend, trying to relieve him of the difficulty. He did not succeed at once, but his efforts were supported by Zürich, Strassburg, Basel, and Bern; and the seignory of Neuchâtel resolved to keep Farel, who continued to labor there till his death.620

• From Little Women (1868)

  Nobody talked much, but as the time drew very near and they sat waiting for the carriage, Mrs. March said to the girls, who were all busied about her, one folding her shawl, another smoothing out the strings of her bonnet, a third putting on her overshoes, and a fourth fastening up her travelling bag... "Children, I leave you to Hannah's care and Mr. Laurence's protection. Hannah is faithfulness itself, and our good neighbor will guard you as if you were his own. I have no fears for you, yet I am anxious that you should take this trouble rightly. Don't grieve and fret when I am gone, or think that you can be idle and comfort yourselves by being idle and trying to forget. Go on with your work as usual, for work is a blessed solace. Hope and keep busy, and whatever happens, remember that you never can be fatherless." "Yes, Mother." "Meg, dear, be prudent, watch over your sisters, consult Hannah, and in any perplexity, go to Mr. Laurence. Be patient, Jo, don't get despondent or do rash things, write to me often, and be my brave girl, ready to help and cheer all. Beth, comfort yourself with your music, and be faithful to the little home duties, and you, Amy, help all you can, be obedient, and keep happy safe at home." "We will, Mother! We will!" The rattle of an approaching carriage made them all start and listen. That was the hard minute, but the girls stood it well. No one cried, no one ran away or uttered a lamentation, though their hearts were very heavy as they sent loving messages to Father, remembering, as they spoke that it might be too late to deliver them. They kissed their mother quietly, clung about her tenderly, and tried to wave their hands cheerfully when she drove away. Laurie and his grandfather came over to see her off, and Mr. Brooke looked so strong and sensible and kind that the girls christened him 'Mr. Greatheart' on the spot. "Good-by, my darlings! God bless and keep us all!" whispered Mrs. March, as she kissed one dear little face after the other, and hurried into the carriage. As she rolled away, the sun came out, and looking back, she saw it shining on the group at the gate like a good omen. They saw it also, and smiled and waved their hands, and the last thing she beheld as she turned the corner was the four bright faces, and behind them like a bodyguard, old Mr. Laurence, faithful Hannah, and devoted Laurie. "How kind everyone is to us!" she said, turning to find fresh proof of it in the respectful sympathy of the young man's face. "I don't see how they can help it," returned Mr. Brooke, laughing so infectiously that Mrs. March could not help smiling. And so the journey began with the good omens of sunshine, smiles, and cheerful words.

• From Little Women (1868)

  "I feel as if there had been an earthquake," said Jo, as their neighbors went home to breakfast, leaving them to rest and refresh themselves. "It seems as if half the house was gone," added Meg forlornly. Beth opened her lips to say something, but could only point to the pile of nicely mended hose which lay on Mother's table, showing that even in her last hurried moments she had thought and worked for them. It was a little thing, but it went straight to their hearts, and in spite of their brave resolutions, they all broke down and cried bitterly. Hannah wisely allowed them to relieve their feelings, and when the shower showed signs of clearing up, she came to the rescue, armed with a coffeepot. "Now, my dear young ladies, remember what your ma said, and don't fret. Come and have a cup of coffee all round, and then let's fall to work and be a credit to the family." Coffee was a treat, and Hannah showed great tact in making it that morning. No one could resist her persuasive nods, or the fragrant invitation issuing from the nose of the coffee pot. They drew up to the table, exchanged their handkerchiefs for napkins, and in ten minutes were all right again. "'Hope and keep busy', that's the motto for us, so let's see who will remember it best. I shall go to Aunt March, as usual. Oh, won't she lecture though!" said Jo, as she sipped with returning spirit. "I shall go to my Kings, though I'd much rather stay at home and attend to things here," said Meg, wishing she hadn't made her eyes so red. "No need of that. Beth and I can keep house perfectly well," put in Amy, with an important air. "Hannah will tell us what to do, and we'll have everything nice when you come home," added Beth, getting out her mop and dish tub without delay. "I think anxiety is very interesting," observed Amy, eating sugar pensively. The girls couldn't help laughing, and felt better for it, though Meg shook her head at the young lady who could find consolation in a sugar bowl. The sight of the turnovers made Jo sober again; and when the two went out to their daily tasks, they looked sorrowfully back at the window where they were accustomed to see their mother's face. It was gone, but Beth had remembered the little household ceremony, and there she was, nodding away at them like a rosyfaced mandarin. "That's so like my Beth!" said Jo, waving her hat, with a grateful face. "Goodbye, Meggy, I hope the Kings won't strain today. Don't fret about Father, dear," she added, as they parted. "And I hope Aunt March won't croak. Your hair is becoming, and it looks very boyish and nice," returned Meg, trying not to smile at the curly head, which looked comically small on her tall sister's shoulders.

• From Little Women (1868)

  With tears and prayers and tender hands, Mother and sisters made her ready for the long sleep that pain would never mar again, seeing with grateful eyes the beautiful serenity that soon replaced the pathetic patience that had wrung their hearts so long, and feeling with reverent joy that to their darling death was a benignant angel, not a phantom full of dread. When morning came, for the first time in many months the fire was out, Jo's place was empty, and the room was very still. But a bird sang blithely on a budding bough, close by, the snowdrops blossomed freshly at the window, and the spring sunshine streamed in like a benediction over the placid face upon the pillow, a face so full of painless peace that those who loved it best smiled through their tears, and thanked God that Beth was well at last. CHAPTER FORTY-ONE LEARNING TO FORGET Amy's lecture did Laurie good, though, of course, he did not own it till long afterward. Men seldom do, for when women are the advisers, the lords of creation don't take the advice till they have persuaded themselves that it is just what they intended to do. Then they act upon it, and, if it succeeds, they give the weaker vessel half the credit of it. If it fails, they generously give her the whole. Laurie went back to his grandfather, and was so dutifully devoted for several weeks that the old gentleman declared the climate of Nice had improved him wonderfully, and he had better try it again. There was nothing the young gentleman would have liked better, but elephants could not have dragged him back after the scolding he had received. Pride forbid, and whenever the longing grew very strong, he fortified his resolution by repeating the words that had made the deepest impression—"I despise you." "Go and do something splendid that will make her love you." Laurie turned the matter over in his mind so often that he soon brought himself to confess that he had been selfish and lazy, but then when a man has a great sorrow, he should be indulged in all sorts of vagaries till he has lived it down. He felt that his blighted affections were quite dead now, and though he should never cease to be a faithful mourner, there was no occasion to wear his weeds ostentatiously. Jo wouldn't love him, but he might make her respect and admire him by doing something which should prove that a girl's 'No' had not spoiled his life. He had always meant to do something, and Amy's advice was quite unnecessary. He had only been waiting till the aforesaid blighted affections were decently interred. That being done, he felt that he was ready to 'hide his stricken heart, and still toil on'.

• From Little Women (1868)

  ended, for no one cared to try another. They kissed her quietly, and went to bed as silently as if the dear invalid lay in the next room. Beth and Amy soon fell asleep in spite of the great trouble, but Meg lay awake, thinking the most serious thoughts she had ever known in her short life. Jo lay motionless, and her sister fancied that she was asleep, till a stifled sob made her exclaim, as she touched a wet cheek... "Jo, dear, what is it? Are you crying about father?" "No, not now." "What then?" "My... My hair!" burst out poor Jo, trying vainly to smother her emotion in the pillow. It did not seem at all comical to Meg, who kissed and caressed the afflicted heroine in the tenderest manner. "I'm not sorry," protested Jo, with a choke. "I'd do it again tomorrow, if I could. It's only the vain part of me that goes and cries in this silly way. Don't tell anyone, it's all over now. I thought you were asleep, so I just made a little private moan for my one beauty. How came you to be awake?" "I can't sleep, I'm so anxious," said Meg. "Think about something pleasant, and you'll soon drop off." "I tried it, but felt wider awake than ever." "What did you think of?" "Handsome faces—eyes particularly," answered Meg, smiling to herself in the dark. "What color do you like best?" "Brown, that is, sometimes. Blue are lovely." Jo laughed, and Meg sharply ordered her not to talk, then amiably promised to make her hair curl, and fell asleep to dream of living in her castle in the air. The clocks were striking midnight and the rooms were very still as a figure glided quietly from bed to bed, smoothing a coverlet here, settling a pillow there, and pausing to look long and tenderly at each unconscious face, to kiss each with lips that mutely blessed, and to pray the fervent prayers which only mothers utter. As she lifted the curtain to look out into the dreary night, the moon broke suddenly from behind the clouds and shone upon her like a bright, benignant face, which seemed to whisper in the silence, "Be comforted, dear soul! There is always light behind the clouds."

• From Cult: A Love Story: Ten Years Inside a Canadian Cult and the Subsequent Long Road of Recovery (2013)

  I hung up the phone after talking with her and immediately dialled a career counsellor I knew, to ask if she could recommend a therapist. She was actually at her desk when the phone rang. “Certainly,” she said. “What kind of help are you looking for?” I wasn’t sure what she meant, so I launched into a brief explanation of what was going on but immediately dissolved into tears that threatened to escalate into uncontrolled sobbing if I continued. She kindly interrupted me, “So, someone for personal work?” Sob, sniff, shuddering breath. “Uh, yes, I guess so,” I spluttered. She gave me the names of two people she knew of and I thanked her. I hung up and immediately dialled the first number and left a message asking for an appointment. Not too much later the therapist called back and we booked one. When we’d chosen a time and date I asked her where her office was located. She gave me the address and suite number and explained that the building was close to Oak Street and Broadway. “That address seems familiar to me,” I thought. As soon as I hung up I realized why; her office was in the same building as Michael’s. God does have a great sense of humour. Her name was Mary and without hyperbole I can say that she helped saved my life. I didn’t know what to expect from therapy, having never been shrunk before. Mary herself was an impressive figure. As she came across the waiting room floor to greet me, my immediate impression was one of elegance. She was not dressed in an overly fancy or formal way, but her bearing and movements were refined, patient and calm. Exactly what I needed. She was tall and slender and had a pretty face topped with a mop of medium-length grey hair, and I guessed that she was in her early to mid-sixties. When we sat down in her office she asked me to explain why I was there and I embarrassed myself by immediately bursting into tears, and as I told my story my weeping only got worse. It is incredibly difficult to sound coherent when you’re sobbing so I was fighting a losing battle to regain control of myself while giving her the gist of what was going on. “Breathe,” she reminded me gently a couple of times during my narrative. I think that for most of that session she made enquiries about my past and what was going on now with Michael and the group, but I can’t say for sure because I was so emotionally overwrought that mostly I just remember sobbing. At the end of the session we booked another appointment for a couple of weeks out and I left feeling that I had an ally, even if she was a virtual stranger, and that I had a safe place and a safe person to hold onto.

• From Little Women (1868)

  Happy, thoughtful times there in the old study which Jo called 'the church of one member', and from which she came with fresh courage, recovered cheerfulness, and a more submissive spirit. For the parents who had taught one child to meet death without fear, were trying now to teach another to accept life without despondency or distrust, and to use its beautiful opportunities with gratitude and power. Other helps had Jo—humble, wholesome duties and delights that would not be denied their part in serving her, and which she slowly learned to see and value. Brooms and dishcloths never could be as distasteful as they once had been, for Beth had presided over both, and something of her housewifely spirit seemed to linger around the little mop and the old brush, never thrown away. As she used them, Jo found herself humming the songs Beth used to hum, imitating Beth's orderly ways, and giving the little touches here and there that kept everything fresh and cozy, which was the first step toward making home happy, though she didn't know it till Hannah said with an approving squeeze of the hand... "You thoughtful creeter, you're determined we shan't miss that dear lamb ef you can help it. We don't say much, but we see it, and the Lord will bless you for't, see ef He don't." As they sat sewing together, Jo discovered how much improved her sister Meg was, how well she could talk, how much she knew about good, womanly impulses, thoughts, and feelings, how happy she was in husband and children, and how much they were all doing for each other. "Marriage is an excellent thing, after all. I wonder if I should blossom out half as well as you have, if I tried it?, always 'perwisin' I could," said Jo, as she constructed a kite for Demi in the topsy-turvy nursery. "It's just what you need to bring out the tender womanly half of your nature, Jo. You are like a chestnut burr, prickly outside, but silky-soft within, and a sweet kernal, if one can only get at it. Love will make you show your heart one day, and then the rough burr will fall off." "Frost opens chestnut burrs, ma'am, and it takes a good shake to bring them down. Boys go nutting, and I don't care to be bagged by them," returned Jo, pasting away at the kite which no wind that blows would ever carry up, for Daisy had tied herself on as a bob. Meg laughed, for she was glad to see a glimmer of Jo's old spirit, but she felt it her duty to enforce her opinion by every argument in her power, and the sisterly chats were not wasted, especially as two of Meg's most effective arguments were the babies, whom Jo loved tenderly. Grief is the best opener of some hearts, and Jo's was nearly ready for the bag.

• From Another Country (1962)

  That’s why we need our friends.” “I wish I could tell you what it was like,” Rufus said, after a long silence. “I wish I could undo it.” “Well, you can’t. So please start trying to forget it.” Rufus thought, But it’s not possible to forget anybody you were that hung up on, who was that hung up on you. You can’t forget anything that hurt so badly, went so deep, and changed the world forever. It’s not possible to forget anybody you’ve destroyed. He took a great swallow of his bourbon, holding it in his mouth, then allowing it to trickle down his throat. He would never be able to forget Leona’s pale, startled eyes, her sweet smile, her plaintive drawl, her thin, insatiable body. He choked slightly, put down his drink, and ground out his cigarette in the spilling ashtray. “I bet you won’t believe this,” he said, “but I loved Leona. I did.” “Oh,” said Vivaldo, “believe you! Of course I believe you. That’s what all the bleeding was about .” He got up and turned the record over. Then there was silence, except for the voice of Bessie Smith. When my bed get empty, make me feel awful mean and blue , “Oh, sing it, Bessie,” Vivaldo muttered. My springs is getting rusty, sleeping single like I do . Rufus picked up his drink and finished it. “Did you ever have the feeling,” he asked, “that a woman was eating you up? I mean—no matter what she was like or what else she was doing—that that’s what she was really doing?” “Yes,” said Vivaldo. Rufus stood. He walked up and down. “She can’t help it. And you can’t help it. And there you are.” He paused. “Of course, with Leona and me—there was lots of other things, too——” Then there was a long silence. They listened to Bessie. “Have you ever wished you were queer?” Rufus asked, suddenly. Vivaldo smiled, looking into his glass. “I used to think maybe I was. Hell, I think I even wished I was.” He laughed. “But I’m not. So I’m stuck. ” Rufus walked to Vivaldo’s window. “So you been all up and down that street, too,” he said. “We’ve all been up the same streets. There aren’t a hell of a lot of streets. Only, we’ve been taught to lie so much, about so many things, that we hardly ever know where we are.” Rufus said nothing. He walked up and down. Vivaldo said, “Maybe you should stay here, Rufus, for a couple of days, until you decide what you want to do.” “I don’t want to bug you, Vivaldo.” Vivaldo picked up Rufus’ empty glass and paused in the archway which led into his kitchen. “You can lie here in the mornings and look at my ceiling. It’s full of cracks, it makes all kinds of pictures. Maybe it’ll tell you things it hasn’t told me.

• From Another Country (1962)

  Well, I’m not at home.” Suddenly, he laughed. “Wouldn’t it be funny if Richard came here? ” “And found you here, you mean?” They laughed, rolling in the bed like children. “I wonder what he’d think.” “Poor man. He wouldn’t know what to think.” They looked at each other and began to laugh again. “We certainly aren’t giving him an awful lot of sympathy,” Eric said. “That’s true.” Vivaldo sat up and lit two cigarettes, giving one to Eric. “The poor bastard must really be suffering; after all, he doesn’t know what hit him.” They were silent. “And I’m sure Cass isn’t laughing.” “No. Not at Richard, not at anything. She sounded half out of her mind.” “Where was she calling from?” “Home. Richard had just gone out.” “I wonder if he really did go to my house. Maybe I should call and see if Ida’s there.” But he did not move toward the phone. “It’s all just about as messy as it can possibly be,” Eric said, after a moment, “Richard’s talking about suing for divorce and getting custody of the children.” “Yes, and he’s probably gone out shopping for a brand with the letter A on it and if he could, he’d arrange for Cass to peddle her ass in the streets and drop dead of syphilis. Slowly. Because the cat’s been wounded, man, in his self-esteem.” “Well,” said Eric, slowly, “he has been wounded. You haven’t got to be—admirable—in order to feel pain.” “No. But I think that perhaps you can begin to become admirable if, when you’re hurt, you don’t try to pay back.” He looked at Eric and put one hand on the back of Eric’s neck. “Do you know what I mean? Perhaps if you can accept the pain that almost kills you, you can use it, you can become better.” Eric watched him, smiling a strange half-smile, with his face full of love and pain. “That’s very hard to do.” “One’s got to try .” “I know.” He said, very carefully, watching Vivaldo, “Otherwise, you just get stopped with whatever it was that ruined you and you make it happen over and over again and your life has—ceased, really—because you can’t move or change or love any more.” Vivaldo let his hand fall. He leaned back. “You’re trying to tell me something. What is it that you’re trying to tell me?” “I was talking about myself.” “Maybe. But I don’t believe you.” “I just hope,” said Eric, suddenly, “that Cass will never hate me.” “Why should she hate you?” “I can’t do her much good.

• From H Is for Hawk (2014)

  Looking back, and all for love. There was a telescope on my bookshelf at the far end of the room. A spotting scope in a green Cordura cover. I’d borrowed it from my father to go birdwatching and it had not been returned. I’d forgotten to bring it with me on that last visit. ‘Next time,’ he said, shaking his head with good-natured exasperation. There was no next time. I could not give it back. I could not apologise to him either. There was a time, perhaps the day after his death, or perhaps the day after that, when I sat on a train with my mother and brother. We were on our way to look for his car. It was a desperate journey. My hands clutched the coarse upholstery of the seat until my knuckles turned white. I remember buddleia, and trackside clinker, and a green gasometer, and Battersea Power Station as the train slowed. And it wasn’t until we were standing on Queenstown Road station, on an unfamiliar platform under a white wooden canopy, wasn’t until we were walking towards the exit, that I realised, for the first time, that I would never see my father again. Ever. I stopped dead. And I shouted. I called out loud for him. Dad. And then the word No came out in one long, collapsing howl. My brother and mother put their arms around me, and I them. Brute fact. I would never speak to him again. I would never see him again. We clung to each other, crying for Dad, the man we loved, the quiet man in a suit with a camera on his shoulder, who had set out each day in search of things that were new, who had captured the courses of stars and storms and streets and politicians, who had stopped time by making pictures of the movings of the world. My father, who had gone out to photograph storm-damaged buildings in Battersea, on that night when the world had visited him with damage and his heart had given way. The photographs he’d taken were still on the camera they handed to my mother at the hospital. The last photograph I saw only once. I never want to see it again. But I can never stop seeing it. Blurred, taken from a low angle, far too low; an empty London street. Sodium lights, dusk, a wall tipped sideways from the vertical and running into the distance; a vanishing point of sallow, stormy sky. 12 Outlaws

• From Another Country (1962)

  He turned away from Eric and sat down on the bed again, and lit a cigarette. And in the tiny flare, Eric’s face leapt at him, then dropped back into darkness. He watched the red-black silhouette of Eric’s head against the dim glow of the Venetian blinds . He remembered that terrible apartment again, and Leona’s tears, and Rufus with the knife, and the bed with the twisted gray sheet and the thin blanket: and it all seemed to have happened many, many years ago. But, in fact, it had only been a matter of months. “I never told this to anybody before,” he said, “and I really don’t know why I’m telling you. It’s just that the last time I saw Rufus, before he disappeared, when he was still with Leona”—he caught his breath, he dragged on his cigarette and the glow brought the room back into the world, then dropped it again into chaos—“we had a fight, he said he was going to kill me. And, at the very end, when he was finally in bed, after he’d cried, and after he’d told me—so many terrible things—I looked at him, he was lying on his side, his eyes were half open, he was looking at me. I was taking off my pants, Leona was staying at my place and I was going to stay there, I was afraid to leave him alone. Well, when he looked at me, just before he closed his eyes and turned on his side away from me, all curled up, I had the weirdest feeling that he wanted me to take him in my arms. And not for sex, though maybe sex would have happened. I had the feeling that he wanted someone to hold him, to hold him, and that, that night, it had to be a man. I got in the bed and I thought about it and I watched his back, it was as dark in that room, then, as it is in this room, now, and I lay on my back and I didn’t touch him and I didn’t sleep. I remember that night as a kind of vigil. I don’t know whether he slept or not, I kept trying to tell from his breathing—but I couldn’t tell, it was too choppy, maybe he was having nightmares. I loved Rufus, I loved him, I didn’t want him to die. But when he was dead, I thought about it, thought about it—isn’t it funny? I didn’t know I’d thought about it as much as I have—and I wondered, I guess I still wonder, what would have happened if I’d taken him in my arms, if I’d held him, if I hadn’t been—afraid. I was afraid that he wouldn’t understand that it was—only love. Only love. But, oh, Lord, when he died, I thought that maybe I could have saved him if I’d just reached out that quarter of an inch between us on that bed, and held him.”