Child Death Quotes

His death brings new experience to my life - that of a wound that will not heal. ~ Ernst Junger

The Lord gave, and the Lord took away, her grandmother said to her at the edge of the grave. But that wasn't right, because the Lord had taken away much more than had been there to start with, and everything her child might have become was now lying there at the bottom of the pit, waiting to be covered up. ~ Jenny Erpenbeck

It's a harrowing experience to see death approaching in haste towards you, what is hell but confronting your own mortality ~ Bangambiki Habyarimana

They think I'm not dealing with my grief, but I simply refuse to give them the satisfaction of seeing it. I won't let them console me and feel like they've played their part well and done all they could do. I will not let them make today about them, and I refuse to make today about me.
Today is about him. ~ Cheyenne Berandi

I destroyed that doll, hoping the sacrifice would somehow reverse time and bring my father back. I was a mad scientist and an angry child. ~ Walter Mosley

Why are the photographs of him as a little boy so incredibly hard to look at? Something is over. Now instead of those shiny moments being things we can share together in delighted memories, I, the survivor, have to bear them alone. So it is with all the memories of him. They all lead into blackness. All I can do is remember him, I cannot experience him. Nothing new can happen between us. ~ Nicholas Wolterstorff

My child died last night - and now I shall be alone again, if I must really go on living. They will come tomorrow, strange, hulking, black-clad men bringing a coffin, and they will put him in it, my poor boy, my only child. ~ Stefan Zweig

Only the debris of wreckage, and not much of that, was left behind by the sharks who fed on tragedy: the fishermen, too, mourned the death of a living child. ~ William Trevor

Death pulls people from our spaces so often and we accept it as our final payment for having been here and having lived, however big or small. We don't always have time to notice how things have changed in the absence of some of them. But then death pulls away someone we love, and we find that time. In here, we notice everything; growing grass and fingernails, and songs that end in a minor key. We are too sad to do anything else but watch a clock, applying seconds, minutes, and hours to the trauma and the lacerations. Time, the forever healer, they say. We find the time to wonder how everyone else is moving on, around our paralyzed selves. Ourselves unsure of roads and trees and birds and things. It all blurs and words aren't words anymore. We find the time to attempt to figure a way to rethink everything we thought about this world and why we came to it. ~ Darnell Lamont Walker

Just as it is impossible to explain childbirth to a woman who has never given birth, it is impossible to explain child loss to a person who has never lost a child. ~ Lynda Cheldelin Fell

Like young fern shoots
my child's fingers curled.
I did not expect,
in the fifth month, frost. ~ Lian Hearn

Kurt and I weren't the closest of friends, but I knew him well enough to be devastated by his death. For such a quiet person, he was so excited about having a child. ~ Layne Staley

Death" is never an end, but a To Be Continued... ~ Renée Chae

Harry ... take my body back, will you? Take my body back to my parents ... ~ J.K. Rowling

He would find his Susie,inside his young son. Give that love to the living. ~ Alice Sebold

People increased their birth rate in response to high child death rates. Make them richer and healthier and they would have fewer babies, as had already happened in Europe, where prosperity had led birth rates down, not up. ~ Matt Ridley

The death of kings can be recited, but not of one's child. ~ James Salter

This is my child, he said. I wash a dead man's brains out of his hair. That is my job. ~ Cormac McCarthy

And no child deserved to die for defending her father, no matter who she was ~ Janice Hardy

For no soul can ever be replaced, and death claims a beauty and a magnificence that will always be missed. ~ Jocelyn Soriano

Will my eyes adjust to this darkness? Will I find you in the dark – not in the streaks of light which remain, but in the darkness? Has anyone ever found you there? Did they love what they saw? Did they see love? And are there songs for singing when the light has gone dim? Or in the dark, is it best to wait in silence?

Noon has darkened. As fast as they could say, 'He's dead,' the light dimmed. And where are you in the darkness? I learned to spy you in the light. Here in this darkness, I cannot find you. If I had never looked for you, or looked but never found, I would not feel this pain of your absence. Or is not your absence in which I dwell, but your elusive troubling presence?

It's the neverness that is so painful. Never again to be here with us – never to sit with us at the table…. All the rest of our lives we must live without him. Only our death can stop the pain of his death. ~ Nicholas Wolterstorff

Difficulty relaxing Insomnia Impatience Taking on too much responsibility Recent major life change (marriage, divorce, birth of child, death of close relative, purchase of home, new job, loss of job, etc.) Irritability Tension headaches Sense of isolation from others Difficulty delegating ~ Hyla Cass

Death was kind." He drew a sharp breath. "But no father should have to give such a kindness to his child. ~ Mark Lawrence

When your child dies, you feel everything you'd expect to feel, feelings so well-documented by so many others that I won't even bother to list them here, except to say that everything that's written about mourning is all the same, and it's all the same for a reason - because there is no read deviation from the text. Sometimes you feel more of one thing and less of another, and sometimes you feel them out of order, and sometimes you feel them for a longer time or a shorter time. But the sensations are always the same.
But here's what no one says - when it's your child, a part of you, a very tiny but nonetheless unignorable part of you, also feels relief. Because finally, the moment you have been expecting, been dreading, been preparing yourself for since the day you became a parent, has come.
Ah, you tell yourself, it's arrived. Here it is.
And after that, you have nothing to fear again. ~ Hanya Yanagihara

I cannot tell you how often I have counseled a grieving woman about a miscarriage or an abortion from years before. There were so many reasons why it was not practical or reasonable to have a child, so on a rational level there was often an understanding and acceptance. However, this did not relieve the pain and guilt of losing a child. In trance states we would often go looking for that soul. What a surprise for many when they discovered that this soul came back as a niece, nephew or even a younger child of their own. ~ Stephen Poplin

No mother should lose her child. ~ Ann Hood

Nobody asks about Beethoven's mother's own life - a fairly miserable round of pregnancy, childbirth, and child death. Was Maria Magdalena Keverich van Beethoven put on earth only to produce her wunderkind? Might she have had gifts of her own that she never got to offer the world? ~ Katha Pollitt

No parent should have to bury a child ... No mother should have to bury a son. Mothers are not meant to bury sons. It is not in the natural order of things.
I buried my son. In a potter's field. In a field of Blood. In empty, acrid silence. There was no funeral. There were no mourners. His friends all absent. His father dead. His sisters refusing to attend. I discovered his body alone, I dug his grave alone, I placed him in a hole, and covered him with dirt and rock alone. I was not able to finish burying him before sundown, and I'm not sure if that affected his fate ...
I begrudge God none of this. I do not curse him or bemoan my lot. And though my heart keeps beating only to keep breaking--I do not question why.
I remember the morning my son was born as if it was yesterday. The moment the midwife placed him in my arms, I was infused with a love beyond all measure and understanding. I remember holding my son, and looking over at my own mother and saying, "Now I understand why the sun comes up at day and the stars come out at night. I understand why rain falls gently. Now I understand you, Mother" ...
I loved my son every day of his life, and I will love him ferociously long after I've stopped breathing. I am a simple woman. I am not bright or learn-ed. I do not read. I do not write. My opinions are not solicited. My voice is not important ... On the day of my son's birth I was infused with a love beyond all measure and understanding ... The world tells me ~ Stephen Adly Guirgis

I sensed that he was dead, but wasn't sure if death was forever. It seemed best to stay nearby, in case the chance came to make everything changed. ~ Sonya Hartnett

It was like a page out of the telephone book. Alphabetically, numerically, statistically, it made sense. But when you looked at it up close, when you examined the pages separately, or the parts separately, when you examined one lone individual and what constituted him, examined the air he breathed, the life he led, the chances he risked, you saw something so foul and degrading, so low, so miserable, so utterly hopeless and senseless, that it was worse than looking into a volcano.
Outwardly it seems to be a beautiful honeycomb, with all the drones crawling over each other in a frenzy of work; inwardly it's a slaughterhouse, each man killing off his neighbor and sucking the juice from his bones. Superficially it looks like a bold, masculine world; actually it's a whorehouse run by women, with the native sons acting as pimps and the bloody foreigners selling their flesh... The whole continent is sound asleep and in that sleep a grand nightmare is taking place…
At night the streets of New York reflect the crucifixion and death of Christ. When the snow is on the ground and there is the utmost silence there comes out of the hideous buildings of New York a music of such sullen despair and bankruptcy as to make the flesh shrivel. No stone was laid upon another with love or reverence; no street was laid for dance or joy. One thing has been added to another in a mad scramble to fill the belly, and the streets smell of empty bellies and full bellies and bellies half full. Th ~ Henry Miller

Sister Pan! I am giving you a direct order as your abbess. You will remain here at the convent!"

Sister Pan shook her head, smiling. "I'm Mistress Path, child. I go where I please." And with that she began to shuffle toward the pillars.

Holy Sister. Third book of the Ancestor. ~ Mark Lawrence

Death, is not an end, but a transition crisis. All the forms of decay are but masks of regeneration
the secret alembics of vitality. ~ Edwin Hubbel Chapin

My sole defense against the natural horror which death inspires is to love beyond it. ~ Sophie Swetchine

One's child is always one's child no matter what age they might be. You worry when your child makes a noise, when he doesn't. It's a terrible kind of love. Terrible. ~ Chris Womersley

I can see where
creation often
stops while the
body still lives
and often
does not care
to.
the death of life
before life
dies. ~ Charles Bukowski

It is exactly in the repetition of the exercises that the education of the senses exists; not that the child shall know colors, forms or qualities, but that he refine his senses through an exercise of attention, comparison and judgment. ~ Maria Montessori

I believe now that there can be no real sense of loss or seperation without
the recognition of death; we were too young to consider any such eventuality,
and simply moved on with our lives into some indefinite but illimitable future. ~ Peter Ackroyd

Every child (regardless of age, or condition), should have three things: nature as a playground, a dog, and a mother willing to let her child enjoy them all. ~ Efrat Cybulkiewicz

Arithmetic is the death of story. ~ Jincy Willett

You make your own kinds of mistakes, and I'm sure you'll have your share of regrets in life. But commitment was never your problem, sweetie. You have a better chance of making this work than most forty-year-olds I know. My little middle-aged child. Luckily, you seem to have found another old soul. ~ Stephenie Meyer

They were handsome, proper and normal family fathers who built the concentration camps and whipped the prisoners to death. And who was Nietzsche? A narcotized syphilitic. ~ Jens Bjorneboe

I fear that a life of death has made me numb to both. ~ Seth Grahame-Smith

Has she accepted you?"
"Not yet.She wants to discuss it with you first."
"Thank God.Because I'll tell her that it's the worst idea I've ever heard."
Leo arched a brow."You doubt I could protect her?"
"I doubt you could keep from murdering each other!I doubt she could ever be happy in such volatile circumstances.I doubt...no,I won't bother listing all my concerns,it would take too bloody long." Harry's eyes were ice-cold. "The answer is no,Ramsay.I'll do what is necessary to take care of Cat.You can return to Hampshire."
"I'm afraid it won't be that easy to get rid of me," Leo said."Perhaps you didn't notice that I haven't asked for your permission.There is no choice.Certain things have happened that can't be undone.Do you understand?"
He saw from Harry's expression that only a few fragile constraints stood between him and certain death.
"You seduced her deliberately," Harry managed to say.
"Would you be happier if I claimed it was an accident?"
"The only thing that would make me happy is to weight you with rocks and toss you into the Thames."
"I understand.I even sympathize.I can't imagine what it would be like to face a man who's compromised your sister,how difficult it would be to keep from murdering him on the spot.Oh, but wait.." Leo tapped a forefinger thoughtfully on his chin. "I can imagine.Because I went through it two bloody months ago."
Harry's eyes narrowed."That wasn't the same.Your sister was still a virgin w ~ Lisa Kleypas

Glory is sacrifice, glory is exhaustion, glory is having nothing left to give.
Almost.
It is death by living. ~ N.D. Wilson

He did not like illness, he distrusted it, as he distrusted the road without signposts.
("Death Of A Traveling Salesman") ~ Eudora Welty

You don't have control" she spat. "Iris doesn't have control. No one does. Control is an illusion. Terrible things happen with no reason at all. Terrible, ugly, fucked-up things like rape and death and loss, and there is no power, no control. There's just the big, mean universe scraping your insides out and tossing them in the trash and there's not a goddamn thing you can do about it ~ Kristen Mae

Alive without breath, As cold as death; Never thirsty, ever drinking, All in mail never clinking. ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

There is no passion that so much transports men from their right judgments as anger. No one would demur upon punishing a judge with death who should condemn a criminal upon the account of his own choler; why then should fathers and pedants be any more allowed to whip and chastise children in their anger? It is then no longer correction bat revenge. Chastisement is instead of physic to children; and should we suffer a physician who should be animated against and enraged at his patient? ~ Michel De Montaigne

The community must assume responsibility for each child within its confines. Not one must be neglected whatever his condition. The community must see that every child gets the advantages and opportunities which are due him as a citizen and as a human being. ~ Pearl S. Buck

You're right about something else," he
said, his voice ragged. "I'm scared to death of you. Because I want you, when common sense and a lifetime of experience tells me I should kill you. I want you, and if I give up then you'll own me, and I'll have nothing left to fight with. ~ Anne Stuart

Blue jeans, white shirt
Walked into the room you know you made my eyes burn
It was like, James Dean, for sure
You're so fresh to death and sick as ca-cancer
You were sorta punk rock, I grew up on hip hop
But you fit me better than my favourite sweater, and I know
That love is mean, and love hurts
But I still remember that day we met in december, oh baby!

I will love you 'til the end of time
I would wait a million years
Promise you'll remember that you're mine
Baby can you see through the tears
Love you more
Than those bitches before
Say you'll remember, oh baby, say you'll remember
I will love you 'til the end of time

Big dreams, gangster
Said you had to leave to start your life over
I was like, "No please, stay here,
We don't need no money we can make it all work,"
But he headed out on sunday, said he'd come home monday
I stayed up waitin', anticipatin', and pacin'
But he was chasing paper
"Caught up in the game" ‒ that was the last I heard

I will love you 'til the end of time
I would wait a million years
Promise you'll remember that you're mine
Baby can you see through the tears
Love you more
Than those bitches before
Say you'll remember, oh baby, say you'll remember
I will love you 'til the end of time

You went out every night
And baby that's alright
I told you that no matter what y ~ Lana Del Rey

Sometimes very small children in a proper environment develop a skill and exactness in their work that can only surprise us. ~ Maria Montessori

Hey police? I just saw the world's oldest, slowest kid climbing into Pleasantview Cemetery. Looked like he was dying to get in. Yeah, looked like a grave matter to me. Kidding? Oh no, I'm in dead earnest. Maybe you ought to dig into it. ~ Stephen King

I wish I could run into the world's arms. Linger within the spaces between nothing. I wish I could filter out of existence. To live quietly without dying. I wish I could be cherished by life itself. To speak and sing volumes without lying to myself. ~ F.K. Preston

To be well loved is to be free of the evil lurking around the next darkened corner. Every child should know that feeling. ~ Rodney Crowell

In Eudora Welty's masterful story "Why I Live at the P.O." (1941), the narrator is engaged in a sibling rivalry with her younger sister, who has come home after leaving under suspicious if not actually disgraceful circumstances. The narrator, Sister, is outraged at having to cook two chickens to feed five people and a small child just because her "spoiled" sister has come home. What Sister can't see, but we can, is that those two fowl are really a fatted calf. It may not be a grand feast by traditional standards, but it is a feast, as called for upon the return of the Prodigal Son, even if the son turns out to be a daughter. Like the brothers in the parable, Sister is irritated and envious that the child who left, and ostensibly used up her "share" of familial goodwill, is instantly welcomed, her sins so quickly forgiven. Then ~ Thomas C. Foster

No one dies except on his own day. You are throwing away none of your own time; for what you leave behind does not belong to you. ~ Seneca.

12And the LORD said to Moses, 13"You are to speak to the people of Israel and say, 'Above all you shall keep my Sabbaths, for this is a sign between me and you throughout your generations, that you may know that I, the LORD, sanctify you. 14You shall keep the Sabbath, because it is holy for you. Everyone who profanes it shall be put to death. n Whoever does any work on it, that soul shall be cut off from among his people. 15 ~ Anonymous

When people ask me about what made the biggest difference in my healing, I tell them that I was believed and tremendously loved. I never felt blamed or shamed into silence. ~ Aishah Shahidah Simmons

I realize that some people will not believe that a child of little more than ten years is capable of having such feelings. My story is not intended for them. I am telling it to those who have a better knowledge of man. The adult who has learned to translate a part of his feelings into thoughts notices the absence of these thoughts in a child, and therefore comes to believe that the child lacks these experiences, too. Yet rarely in my life have I felt and suffered as deeply as at that time. ~ Hermann Hesse

My name is Samaranth," said the great red beast, "and all those you see around you declined my invitation, opting instead to help themselves to the treasure. So, Sons of Adam, choose. Will you drink with me, or do you want to plunder, and die?"

"Are you serious?" said Jack. "Tea or death? Of course we'll take the tea." The others all nodded in enthusiastic agreement. "What kind of fool would choose death?"

"Bet they wuz Cambridge scowlers, eh, master Charles?" said Tummeler with a wink.

"Undoubtedly," said Charles. ~ James A. Owen

Ye gave me a child, mo nighean donn," he said softly, into the cloud of my hair. "We are together for always. She is safe; and we will live forever now, you and I." He kissed me, very lightly, and laid his head upon the pillow next to me. "Brianna," he whispered, in that odd Highland way that made the name his own. ~ Diana Gabaldon

I just hope that I will be as good a mom to my child, and hopefully children, as my mom was to me. ~ Chelsea Clinton

Take the heart first. Then you don't feel the cold so much. The pain so much. With the heart gone, there's no reason to stay your hand. Your eyes can look on death and not tremble. It's the heart that betrays us, makes us weep, makes us bury our friends when we should be marching ahead. It's the heart that sickens us at night and makes us hate who we are. It's the heart that sings old songs and brings memories of warm days and makes us waver at another mile, another smouldering village. ~ Jeanette Winterson

[Andrei Sakharov] won his Nobel in 1975 for demanding a halt to the testing of nuclear weapons. He, of course, had already tested his. His wife was a pediatrician! What sort of person could perfect a hydrogen bomb while married to a child-care specialist? What sort of physician would stay married to a mate that cracked?
"Anything interesting happen at work today, honeybunch?"
"Yes. My bomb is going to work just great. And how are you doing with that kid with chicken pox? ~ Kurt Vonnegut

If a high-reactive toddler breaks another child's toy by mistake, studies show, she often experiences a more intense mix of guilt and sorrow than a lower-reactive child would. ...but high-reactive kids seem to see and feel things more. ~ Susan Cain

I'm not good with hospitals. The endless buildings, trees dotted around like apologies, and inside, it's job functions you can't understand and that air of incomprehensible busyness. Curtained-off beds and death settling like falling snow. ~ Harry Bingham

How much did I hear of religion as a child? Very little, and yet my heart leaped when I heard the name of God. I do believe every soul has a tendency toward God. ~ Dorothy Day

Sawcy, and ouer-bold, how did you dare
To Trade, and Trafficke with Macbeth,
In Riddles, and Affaires of death;
And I the Mistris of your Charmes,
The close contriuer of all harmes,
Was neuer call'd to beare my part,
Or shew the glory of our Art? ~ William Shakespeare

What is so sweet as to awake from a troubled dream and behold a beloved face smiling upon you? I love to believe that such shall be our awakening from earth to heaven. My faith never wavers that each dear friend I have "lost" is a new link between this world and the happier land beyond the morn. My soul is for the moment bowed down with grief when I cease to feel the touch of their hands or hear a tender word from them; but the light of faith never fades from the sky, and I take heart again, glad they are free. I cannot understand why anyone should fear death…Suppose there are a million chances against that one that my loved ones who have gone on are alive. What of it? I will take that one chance and risk mistake, rather than let any doubts sadden their souls, and find out afterward. Since there is that one chance of immortality, I will endeavor not to cast a shadow on the joy of the departed…Certainly it is one of our sweetest experiences that when we are touched by some noble affection or pure joy, we remember the dead most tenderly, and feel more powerfully drawn to them. ~ Helen Keller

Man comes into the world a blind, groping mite. He knows hunger and the fear of noise and of falling. His life is spent in flight - flight from hunger and from the thunderbolt of destiny. From his moment of birth he begins to fall through the whistling air of Time: down, down into a chasm of darkness . . . we come like a breath of wind over the fields of morning. We go like a lamp flame caught by a blast from a darkened window. In between we journey from table to table, from battle to bottle, from bed to bed. We suck, we chew, we swallow, we lick, we try to mash life into us like an am-am-amoeba God damn it! Somebody lets us loose like a toad out of a matchbox and we jump and jump and jump and the guy always behind us, and when he gets tired he stomps us to death and our guts squirt out on each side of the boot of All Merciful Providence. The son-of-a-bitch! ~ William Lindsay Gresham

When I was a child, I wanted to be a jockey. I love horses, but it's not practical to have one in London. I also wanted to be an accountant, which isn't glamorous at all, but my dad was one, and I quite liked maths. ~ Lydia Leonard

Terrified at Non Existence, for such they deemd the death of the body, Los his vegetable hands outstretch'd; his right hand branching out in fibrous Strength siez'd the Sun; his left hand like dark roots cover'd the Moon, and tore them down, cracking the heavens across from immense to immense. ~ William Blake