After You (Me Before You, #2)

by Jojo Moyes

So with the loss of my family as well as the man I had loved, every thread that had linked me to who I was had been abruptly cut. I felt as if I had simply floated off, untethered, to some unknown universe.

And when it came down to it, what was the point in reexamining your sadness all the time anyway? It was like picking away at a wound and refusing to let it heal.

How could she understand that losing him was like having a hole shot straight through me, a painful, constant reminder, an absence I could never fill?

Sometimes I felt as if we were all wading around in grief, reluctant to admit to others how far we were waving or drowning.

Too many people follow their own happiness without a thought for the damage they leave in their wake.

You wouldn’t believe the kids I pick up at the weekends, drunk, drugged, off their heads, whatever. The parents are wrapped up in their own stuff, or have disappeared completely, so they exist in a vacuum, and they make bad choices.”

no journey out of grief was straightforward. There would be good days and bad days. Today was just a bad day, a kink in the road, to be traversed and survived.

‘You don’t have to let that one thing be the thing that defines you.’”

We’re all doughnuts! You think I didn’t watch my sister being eaten up by cancer and know that my heart was going to break, not just for her, but for her son, every day of my life? You think I don’t know how that feels? There’s only one response, and I can tell you this because I see it every day. You live. And you throw yourself into everything and try not to think about the bruises.”

none of us move on without a backward look. We move on always carrying with us those we have lost. What we aim to do in our little group is ensure that carrying them is not a burden, something that feels impossible to bear, a weight keeping us stuck in the same place. We want their presence to feel like a gift.