Nikolai Yaroshenko. Funeral of Firstborn, 1893

The anguish and absolutely lost expression on the mother's face. 

Quiet sadness on father's face and gentle supporting arm he provides to his wife. 

A coffin too small to comprehend.

Grief teaches the steadiest minds to waver.

-Sophocles

Parting is all we know of heaven and all we need of hell.

-Emily Dickinson

When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives means the most us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving much advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a gentle and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares.

-Henri Nouwen

Quiet and sincere sympathy is often the most welcome and efficient consolation to the afflicted. Said a wise man to one in deep sorrow, ‘I did not come to comfort you; God only can do that; but I did come to say how deeply and tenderly I feel for you in your affliction.’

-Tyron Edwards

Sorrow makes us all children again - destroys all differences of intellect. The wisest know nothing.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

There are things that we don't want to happen but have to accept, things we don't want to know but have to learn, and people we can't live without but have to let go.

-Author Unknown

If you suppress grief too much, it can well redouble.

-Moliere

I know God will not give me anything I can't handle. I just wish that He didn't trust me so much.

-Mother Teresa

She was no longer wrestling with the grief, but could sit down with it as a lasting companion and make it a sharer in her thoughts.

-George Eliot