The Mourning After Quotes

“I miss you so much in these wee morning hours,
when the depth of the night sets my spirit free.
When the forest is dark, and there doesn’t have to be anything in the world
but the beauty I pull out of it.
I miss you throughout the day,
as I come across glories and wonders that could easily overwhelm me,
but just dull because you’re not here to enjoy them.”
― Edward Fahey, The Mourning After

“Sometimes I wish I could feel more pain
so I could touch that much more beauty.”
― Edward Fahey, The Mourning After

“Darkness crept through. Shadows pried at doors, teased dull edges of recollections that never quite took hold. Memories that would have shriveled under the blinding sun of daylight. And reason.”
― Edward Fahey, The Mourning After

“Decades after little Colleen’s death, my sister Kathy still loves her daughter dearly. Colleen was born with cerebral palsy. She died in Kath’s arms in a rocking chair at the age of six. They were listening to a music box that looked very much like a smiling pink bunny.
The opening quote in this book, “I will love you forever, but I’ll only miss you for the rest of my life,” is from Kath’s nightly prayers to her child.
Colleen couldn’t really talk or walk very well, but loved untying my mother’s tennis shoes and then laughing. When Mom died decades later we sent her off in tennis shoes so Colleen would have something to untie in Heaven.
In the meantime, Dad had probably been taking really good care of her up there. He must have been aching to hug her for all of her six years on earth.
Mom’s spirit comes back to play with great grandchildren she’d never met or had a chance to love while she was still – I almost said “among the living.” In my family, though, the dead don’t always stay that way. You can be among the living without technically being alive. Mom comes back to play, but Dad shows up only in emergencies. They are both watching over their loved ones.
“The Mourning After” is dedicated to all those we have had the joy of loving before they’ve slipped away to the other side.
It then celebrates the joy of re-unions.”
― Edward Fahey, The Mourning After

“I’d gone out into the world, intricately lacing distractions and busywork around the long-gnawing emptiness, only to find I’d merely embellished rather than hidden it.”
― Edward Fahey, The Mourning After

“It is so hard to think ‘was’ about your mom.”
― Edward Fahey, The Mourning After

“Grief is a closing that leads to an opening just exactly when you really don’t want one.”
― Edward Fahey, The Mourning After

“Some guarded their children when they saw me, as though congenital defects and loneliness were contagious, even at a distance and through glass.”
― Edward Fahey, The Mourning After

“Something had gone horribly wrong at my birth, so my father would never have his little soldier, Mom would never have her home filled with tiny scampering joy, and we each clutched our guilt very privately.”
― Edward Fahey, The Mourning After

“It was a dense, moldering night, smelling of damp old basements and times best left unstirred.”
― Edward Fahey, The Mourning After