Hardship and Happiness (Ad Marciam De consolatione, Ad Helviam matrem De consolatione, De Consolatione ad Polybium, De Brevitate Vitæ, De Constantia Sapientis, De Tranquillitate Animi, De Otio, De Vita Beata, De Providentia)

by Seneca

So choose which of these examples you think the more commendable. If you want to follow the first one, you will absent yourself from the company of the living; you will avoid both other people’s children and your own, and even the very child you miss; mothers will regard you as a bad omen when you encounter them; you will spurn pleasures that are honorable and permissible, as though inappropriate to your misfortune; you will hate the light in which you linger, and will bitterly detest your age, because it does not instantly strike you down and bring your life to an end; and—something most shameful and quite out of keeping with your character, which is very highly regarded—you will demonstrate that you do not want to live and yet are incapable of dying.

Unresolved grief