I'll Be Seeing You Quotes

“Yes, life is a minefield at any age. Sometimes we feel pretty certain that we know what's coming. But really, we never do. We just walk on. We have to. If we are smart we count our blessings between the darker surprises.”
― Elizabeth Berg, I'll Be Seeing You: A Memoir

“I think it was Robert Frost who said that everything he had learned about life could be summed up in three words: it goes on.”
― Elizabeth Berg, I'll Be Seeing You: A Memoir

“I have a friend whose elderly mother lives with her and is driving her crazy. Her mother was once a talented artist, an intellectual with myriad interests. Now, my friend says, “she gets up in the morning and makes a cup of coffee and she’s so slow, doing it. I mean, I just watch her sometimes to see how she can possibly be so slow. Then she sits at the kitchen table and talks about what might be for lunch. I just can’t stand it! All she talks about is her cup of coffee in the morning and the weather and what her next meal will be. I really wonder…..is there any meaning to the end of life?”

I suppose one way to answer that question is to think about how a baby’s meaning in life is a ray of sunshine, the color red, the nearness of his mother’s flesh. For a teenager, it is music, fitting in, hormone management. In midlife, meaning comes from focusing on our families, our jobs, our involvement with the world outside our kitchens. Which is to say that the meaning of life is ever-changing, even as we are. Who’s to say that the richest time of life might not be when a cup of morning coffee fills the world? If you found a holy man hidden away on a mountain who found fulfillment in such seemingly simple things, would you not admire him?”
― Elizabeth Berg, I'll Be Seeing You: A Memoir

“I stood looking at it, and a thousand things occurred to me about the way that even in bitterness and confusion and anger, my parents love for each other endured. I saw that when I was looking at them, I was only seeing the tip of the iceberg. They belonged to each other more that they belonged to us.”
― Elizabeth Berg, I'll Be Seeing You: A Memoir

“I am crippled in love relationships by fear, by defense, by doubt, by my own lack of self-regard. It makes me constantly want to abandon ship.”
― Elizabeth Berg, I'll Be Seeing You: A Memoir

“Goodness and mercy may not follow me all the days of my life, but it is here now.”
― Elizabeth Berg, I'll Be Seeing You: A Memoir

“When I was forty-three, I lost one of my best friends to breast cancer. One of the things I remember most is sitting on the little balcony off her kitchen with her one evening at sunset, looking out over the acres of land so she could see from there, the hills and winding roads and houses nestled into their lots as though settled on their mothers' laps. I remember her saying, "I just want to be here." Earlier that day, I'd sat at the kitchen table and listened while she spoke to someone on the phone, making her own arrangements for a burial plot. She told whomever she was speaking to her name, her address. When she gave her age, she said, "Well, I'm only forty-four. Which is really terrible.”
― Elizabeth Berg, I'll Be Seeing You: A Memoir

“I think it was Robert Frost who said that everything he had learned about life could be summed up in three words: it goes on”
― Elizabeth Berg, I'll Be Seeing You: A Memoir

“I learned that the frustration and anger that comes up in these situations go both ways: you're frustrated and/or angry with your parents and they're frustrated and/or angry with you.”
― Elizabeth Berg, I'll Be Seeing You: A Memoir