And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying.

There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away.

Story is the bandage of the broken. Sutures of the shattered. The tapestry upon which we write our lives. Upon which we lay the bodies of the dying and the about-to-come-to-life. And if it's honest, true, hiding nothing, revealing all, then it is a raging river and those who ride it find they have something to give—that they are not yet empty.

She blazed, burned herself out, and then disappeared into the silent deep, sounding the echoes of remembrance throughout a hollow and shattered heart.

With the tears a Land hath shed Their graves should ever be green...

For many of us, we will come to the point where death will be the only healer for the pain which our lives will have come to contain.

You don't really get over it. It is such a great loss," Jane said. "I guess the depth of our grief is a reminder of the depth of our love.

This world could not have been the work of an all-loving being, but that of a devil, who had brought creatures into existence in order to delight in the sight of their sufferings.

One bright morning when my work is over I will fly away home.

I am left alone in the wide world. My own dear family I have buried: one in Rangoon, and two in Amherst. What remains for me but to hold myself in readiness to follow the dear departed to that blessed world, 'Where my best friends, my kindred dwell, where God, my Saviour, reigns.'

this country would always be populated with presences and absences, presences of absences, the living and the dead. The world as it is would always be a reminder of the world that was, and of the world that is to come.

And so I learned about grief, and about the absence and emptiness that for a long time make grief unforgettable.