The Last Love Note Quotes

“That’s the problem with grief. It’s not packed tidily in a box that you can bring out in appropriate, private moments and sort through. It’s threaded inconveniently through everything.”
― Emma Grey, The Last Love Note

“I've learned that love outlives death. It holds steady through despair. It won't fade, even as time elapses and distance increases and your world shifts.”
― Emma Grey, The Last Love Note

“How long is it reasonable to drag out your recovery from grief until you're expected to get your act together again?
Or maybe that's where I'm going wrong. You don't recover from it. There is no "healed" moment. You just absorb it into your new life, somehow, and go from there.”
― Emma Grey, The Last Love Note

“What I wouldn't give for someone - I don't care who - just to step into my life and take the reins, for even a second.”
― Emma Grey, The Last Love Note

“She's one of the golden threads running through each of our lives. Hope, in human form.”
― Emma Grey, The Last Love Note

“You may never stop loving the one you lost. But you can still find love again.”
― Emma Grey, The Last Love Note

“If I stay very still and very open, our energies feel so close it's as if we can almost touch in this place where love is infinite. Limitless.”
― Emma Grey, The Last Love Note

“This is not a fork in the road, I realize. It’s just the road. There’s no Story A and Story B. There’s one, imperfect, meandering direction.”
― Emma Grey, The Last Love Note

“His absence will be the eternal backdrop to everything else I do until the day I die.”
― Emma Grey, The Last Love Note

“No amount of sadness is going to bring your husband back. Did he want you to be happy when he was alive?"
"Blissfully."
She smiles. "Don't take that away from him, then, in death.”
― Emma Grey, The Last Love Note

“He stays dead," I whisper ... "He keeps on not coming back," I continue, as if discovering this truth for the first time.”
― Emma Grey, The Last Love Note

“There was so much help in the beginning. They say grief changes your address book and it surprised me who stepped up and how.”
― Emma Grey, The Last Love Note

“Maybe because, even in loss, there’s so much more to life.”
― Emma Grey, The Last Love Note

“Maybe you need an adult gap year. Sell up, travel, write … see what the world offers you.” I can’t deny even the idea of it stirs something new in me. I need adventure. New horizons. Different challenges that don’t revolve around watching a husband die.”
― Emma Grey, The Last Love Note

“My current self shakes her head at the naïveté of my Teen Self. Life was going to get so much bigger and more anxiety-inducing than how badly you do in algebra, girl.…”
― Emma Grey, The Last Love Note

“A shadow passes across Hugh’s face. “I know how debilitating it is to carry big problems into work every day and still function.”
― Emma Grey, The Last Love Note

“Is my spark ever going to return?”
― Emma Grey, The Last Love Note

“The point is, it’s your life. Your decision. Your timing. You might resist it now, but you’ll know the moment when it comes, and not before. And then you’ll realize the bigger risk is not taking a risk.”
― Emma Grey, The Last Love Note

“The longer I stay here, chasing the ghost of my former life, the shorter the next chapter of my life will become.”
― Emma Grey, The Last Love Note

“I feel this immense responsibility to stay alive.”
― Emma Grey, The Last Love Note

“I've learned that love outlives death. It holds steady through despair. It won't fade, even as time elapses and distance increases and your world shifts.”
― Emma Grey, The Last Love Note

“I read that a widow's only job in the first twelve months is to keep herself alive, and I understand the achievement.”
― Emma Grey, The Last Love Note

“But at some point people have to go back to their own lives. You can't expect them to sit with you forever or be there for every leaking tap or flat tire.”
― Emma Grey, The Last Love Note

“I miss you," I breathe ...”
― Emma Grey, The Last Love Note

“when something is about to pass you by. There’s so much focus in grief on getting through all the “firsts.” First birthday without the person. First Christmas. First day of a new year they’ll never share with you. Before that, though, there’s a series of “lasts.” And by the time you’re aware of them, you’ve missed them. Things fade beyond comprehension. It’s too late for the words you’ve been saving.”
― Emma Grey, The Last Love Note

“Grief is strange, when it happens in advance. Since Cam’s diagnosis two years ago, I’ve been processing this loss every day. I thought the time we had to accept it would make it easier. Sudden death must be so blindsiding in comparison. But now I’m here, I’m blindsided anyway, because I never truly believed this would unfold. Never stopped hoping for a miracle, even though we were so obviously not going to get one.”
― Emma Grey, The Last Love Note

“There was so much help in the beginning. They say grief changes your address book and it surprised me who stepped up, and how.”
― Emma Grey, The Last Love Note

“Sometimes I flirt with death. It’s just a fleeting glance. A blip, somewhere on the outer edge of my radar. A faint, comforting reminder it’s always there in case I need it.”
― Emma Grey, The Last Love Note

“It’s a lot like grief, standing here. You’re dragged from the shallows into the depths where it’s dark and heavy and you can’t see or hear or breathe. There were times over the last two years when, if I screamed, grief would swallow up the noise. It was bigger than my voice. A whirl of emotion for which there’s no sufficient word in the entirety of the English language.”
― Emma Grey, The Last Love Note

“You can’t know in advance how you’ll grieve. Can’t understand that time doesn’t operate the way it used to. Seconds are hours. Days are years. Your person was just here. Now they’re flung beyond the fringes of the universe.”
― Emma Grey, The Last Love Note