On Grief and Losing a Mother

Now there is one thing I can tell you: you will enjoy certain pleasures you would not fathom now. When you still had your mother you often thought of the days when you would have her no longer. Now you will often think of days past when you had her. When you are used to this horrible thing that they will be forever cast into the past, then you will gently feel her revive, returning to take her place, her entire place, beside you. At the present time, this is not yet possible. Let yourself be inert, wait till the incomprehensible power… that has broken you restores you a little, I say a little, for henceforth you will always keep something broken about you. Tell yourself this, too, for it is a kind of pleasure to know that you will never love less, that you will never be consoled, that will constantly remember her more and more.

~(1907) Letter from Proust to Georges de Lauris, whose mother had just died. Translated from the French by Richard Howard.

As Imperceptibly as Grief

As imperceptibly as Grief
The Summer lapsed away—
Too imperceptible at last
To seem like Perfidy—
A Quietness distilled
As Twilight long begun,
Or Nature spending with herself
Sequestered Afternoon—
The Dusk drew earlier in—
The Morning foreign shone—
A courteous, yet harrowing Grace,
As Guest, that would be gone—
And thus, without a Wing
Or service of a Keel
Our Summer made her light escape
Into the Beautiful.
~Emily Dickinson, As Imperceptibly as Grief

Song

Pain will cease, do not grieve, do not grieve--
Friends will return, the heart will rest, do not grieve, do not grieve--
The wound will be made whole, do not grieve, do not grieve--
Day will come forth, do not grieve, do not grieve--
The cloud will open, night will decline, do not grieve, do not grieve--
The seasons will change, do not grieve, do not grieve.

~Faiz Ahmed Faiz