Wordgrove Post & Review

This issue dedicated to the passing of year 2020, and the people lost to it

Quoted in The Grove:   death

…my friends will lie in their lonely grave, and I alone will remain like a solitary stalk forgotten by the reaper.
~Heinrich Heine

A friend who dies, it’s something of you who dies.
Gustave Flaubert

When some men die it is as if you had lost your pen-knife, and were subject to perpetual inconvenience until you could get another. Other men’s going is like the vanishing of a great mountain from the landscape, and the outlook of life is changed forever.
~Phillips Brooks

EndQuote:
Where you used to be, there is a hole in the world, which I find myself constantly walking around in the daytime, and falling in at night. I miss you like hell.
~Edna St Vincent Millay

~ ~

Exercise Prompt for 01/03:   birth

~ ~

The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and deeds left undone.
~Harriet Beecher Stowe

Death is a challenge. It tells us not to waste time… It tells us to tell each other right now that we love each other.
~Leo Buscaglia

There isn’t much sudden death — there’s usually time to square yourself.
~Martin H Fischer

If you were going to die soon and had only one phone call to make, who would you call and what would you say? And why are you waiting?
~Stephen Levine

Beginning today, treat everyone you meet as if they were going to be dead by midnight. Extend to them all the care, kindness and understanding you can muster, and do it with no thought of any reward. Your life will never be the same again.
~Og Mandino

~

He first deceas’d;
She for a little tri’d
To live without him:
lik’d it not, and di’d.
~Henry Worton

Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won’t either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart.
~Louise Erdrich

Mostly it is loss which teaches us about the worth of things.
~Arthur Schopenhauer

~ ~

Posted from the Grove

Honey
Don’t be feared of them pearly gates…
Honey
Go straight on to de Big House,
An’ speak to yo’ God…
~Sterling A Brown

And there came a day, I its reckoning keep,
When mother, worn out, just dropped asleep,—
Her voice melting into an angel’s song:
“I shall wait at the Gate, so don’t stay too long.”
~Adelbert Farrington Caldwell

~

Your white hair
on the thin rack
of your shoulders

it is hard to
look into the eyes
of the dying

who carry away
a part of oneself —
a shared world
~John Montague

We understand death for the first time when he puts his hand upon one whom we love.
~Madame de Stael

I think when loved ones die, we absorb something from them that makes us who we are so we can continue on.
~Reginald VelJohnson

He who has gone, so we but cherish his memory, abides with us, more potent, nay, more present than the living man.
~Antoine de Saint-Exupery

The death of someone we know always reminds us that we are still alive — perhaps for some purpose which we ought to re-examine.
~Mignon McLaughlin

There is no right way to grieve; there is only your way to grieve and that is different for everyone.
~Nathalie Himmelrich

Grief is not a disorder, a disease or sign of weakness. It is an emotional, physical and spiritual necessity, the price you pay for love. The only cure for grief is to grieve.
~Earl A Grollman

We never bury the dead, son. We take them with us. It’s the price of living.
~Mark Goffman/Jose Molina

~~

~Paul Kalanithi:  Before I Go
https://stanmed.stanford.edu/2015spring/before-i-go.html

~

Dylan Thomas:  Do Not Go Gentle   (2:07)   Anthony Hopkins reading
https://vimeo.com/151752108

~

~Rafal Bojar:  Do Not Go Gentle   (2:43)   different, not Dylan Thomas
https://vimeo.com/258059779

~~

Someday I’ll be a weather-beaten skull resting on a grass pillow,
Serenaded by a stray bird or two.
Kings and commoners end up the same,
No more enduring than last night’s dream.
~Ryokan

And they die an equal death — the idler and the man of mighty deeds.
~Homer (Iliad)

You can be a king or a street sweeper,
but everybody dances with the Grim Reaper.
~Robert Alton Harris

Why do you weep? Did you think I was immortal?
~Louis XIV

~

It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived.
~George S Patton

The highest tribute to the dead is not grief but gratitude.
~Thornton Wilder

The graveyards are full of indispensable men.
~Elbert Hubbard

~~

VIDEO:   tears for catharsis

Death is life’s way of telling you you’re fired.
~Author unknown

Suicide is man’s way of telling God, “You can’t fire me — I quit.”
~Bill Maher

They tell us that suicide is the greatest piece of cowardice… that suicide is wrong; when it is quite obvious that there is nothing in the world to which every man has a more unassailable title than to his own life and person.
~Arthur Schopenhauer

If I cannot give consent to my own death, whose body is this? Who owns my life?
~Sue Rodriguez

Suicide is… the sincerest form of criticism life gets.
~Wilfred Sheed

One should die proudly when it is no longer possible to live proudly.Death of one’s own free choice, death at the proper time, with a clear head and with joyfulness, consummated in the midst of children and witnesses: so that an actual leave-taking is possible while he who is leaving is still there.
~Friedrich Nietzsche

Death is for many of us the gate of hell; but we are inside on the way out, not outside on the way in.
~George Bernard Shaw

Dying ain’t pretty. Death is beautiful.
~Terri Guillemets

Death is a delightful hiding place for weary men.
~Herodotus

Some people say Death’s heart is as dead and black as a piece of coal, but that is not true. Beneath his inky cloak, Death’s heart is as red as the most beautiful sunset and beats with a great love of life.
~Glenn Ringtved

~~

~Marsha Onderstijn:  The Life of Death   (5:00)   animated, loneliness of Death
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofnCdC8P70g

~

~Ammar Sonderberg:  The Call   (3:49)   dad and daughter talk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLbAMN1fc6o

~

~Austin Taylor:  Death and the Robot   (11:30)   animated, Death and spring
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okCIHAbve3k

~

~Yaya:  Keep It Quiet   (14:05)   the decision
https://vimeo.com/channels/staffpicks/490799434

~~

When I die I shall be content to vanish into nothingness…. No show, however good, could conceivably be good forever…. I do not believe in immortality, and have no desire for it.
~H L Mencken

Oh, for the time when I shall sleep
Without identity.
~Emily Bronte

Death will be a great relief. No more interviews.
~Katharine Hepburn

~

Peace, peace! he is not dead, he doth not sleep, —
He hath awaken’d from the dream of life.
~Shelley

We sometimes congratulate ourselves at the moment of waking from a troubled dream; it may be so the moment after death.
~Nathaniel Hawthorne

But what is all this fear of and opposition to Oblivion? What is the matter with the soft Darkness, the Dreamless Sleep?
~James Thurber

There is nothing frightening about an eternal dreamless sleep. Surely it is better than eternal torment in Hell and eternal boredom in Heaven.
~Isaac Asimov

Life is better than death, I believe, if only because it is less boring, and because it has fresh peaches in it.
~Alice Walker

~~

MUSIC:

Life is eternal, and love is immortal, and death is only a horizon; and a horizon is nothing save the limit of our sight.
~Rossiter Worthington Raymond

Emanuel looked down calm as an eternal sun on the autumn of his bodily life; nay, the more the sand fell from his life’s hourglass, so much the more clearly did he look through the empty glass.
~Jean Paul Friedrich Richter

~

When people don’t express themselves, they die one piece at a time.
~Laurie Halse Anderson

You know what the true definition of hell is? It’s when you die, you get to meet the person you could have been.
~Frank Mir

It’s better to burn out, than to fade away.
~Neil Young

~~

~Salut Salon:  Wettstreit zu viert   (3:24)   competitive foursome, fun
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKezUd_xw20

~

~Farinelli – Ombra fedele anch’io   (Aria – 4:33)   love in the age of castrati
https://youtu.be/y3fzhMnGs5E

~

~Charles Berthoud:  When You Hit A wRonG Note In Classical vs Jazz   (3:33)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1HHKGlBugA

~

~Bob Dylan:  Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door — covered Avril Lavigne   (3:01)   the price
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_5-Kf2CrLc

~~

Since the day of my birth, my death began its walk. It is walking toward me, without hurrying.
~Jean Cocteau

Our birth is nothing but our death begun.
~Edward Young

Every day in the mirror I watch death at work.
~Jean Cocteau

Somebody should tell us, right at the start of our lives, that we are dying. Then we might live life to the limit, every minute of every day. Do it! I say. Whatever you want to do, do it now! There are only so many tomorrows.
~Pope Paul VI

Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.
~Mahatma Gandhi

You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.
~Mae West

That it will never come again is what makes life so sweet.
~Emily Dickinson

~

Death, in itself, is nothing; but we fear to be we know not what, we know not where.
~John Dryden

After your death you will be what you were before your birth.
~Arthur Schopenhauer

~~

~

~~

I never wanted to see anybody die, but there are a few obituary notices I have read with pleasure.
~Clarence Darrow

I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it through not dying.
~Woody Allen

He was a great patriot, a humanitarian, a loyal friend; provided, of course, he really is dead.
~Voltaire

I’m always relieved when someone is delivering a eulogy and I realize I’m listening to it.
~George Carlin

When you’ve told someone that you’ve left them a legacy the only decent thing to do is to die at once.
~Samuel Butler

They say such nice things about people at their funerals that it makes me sad that I’m going to miss mine by just a few days.
~Garrison Keillor

We who think we are about to die will laugh at anything.
~Terry Pratchett

Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh.
~George Bernard Shaw

~

What happens if you get scared half to death twice?
~Steven Wright

What happens after you die? Lot’s of things happen after you die — they just don’t involve you
~Louis C K

I am not afraid of death, I just don’t want to be there when it happens.
~Woody Allen

I want a priest, a rabbi, and a Protestant clergyman. I want to hedge my bets.
~Wilson Mizner

I wouldn’t mind dying — it’s the business of having to stay dead that scares the [$h¡t] out of me.
~R Geis

I want to die in my sleep like my grandfather… Not screaming and yelling like the passengers in his car.
~Will Shriner

You should always go to other people’s funerals, otherwise, they won’t come to yours.
~Yogi Berra

I intend to live forever, or die trying.
~Groucho Marx

I intend to live forever. So far, so good.
~Steven Wright

Hollywood is where they shoot too many pictures and not enough actors.
~Walter Winchell

Some men are alive simply because it is against the law to kill them.
~E W Howe

I didn’t attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it.
~Mark Twain

~~

© David Lorenz Winston

~~

A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic.
~Joseph Stalin

Death is what takes place within us when we look upon others not as gift, blessing, or stimulus but as threat, danger, competition.
~Dorothee Solle

May God have mercy on my soul for the deaths on my name and for the treachery I committed. Betrayal of God and country, what a sad and horrible thing it is.
~E Howard Hunt

Ah, still, at least, whate’er the proud world saith,
Even one debased as I may reach the dignity of death!
I think the meanest life can somehow save
A trace of hidden grandeur for its grave…
I, if I went like that, might thrill to see
Eternity between my shame and me!—
~Edgar Fawcett

If the truth shall kill them, let them die.
~Ayn Rand

~

Death is a law, not a punishment.
~Jean Dubos

To take a life when a life has been lost is revenge, not justice.
~Desmond Tutu

For centuries the death penalty, often accompanied by barbarous refinements, has been trying to hold crime in check; yet crime persists.
~Albert Camus

Do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all ends.
~J R R Tolkien

Capital punishment is our society’s recognition of the sanctity of human life.
~Orrin Hatch

Capital punishment is the most premeditated of murders.
~Albert Camus

If we believe that murder is wrong and not admissible in our society, then it has to be wrong for everyone, not just individuals but governments as well.
~Helen Prejean

As if one crime of such nature, done by a single man, acting individually, can be expiated by a similar crime done by all men, acting collectively.
~Lewis Lawes

An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.
~Mohandas Gandhi

The mode of death is sadder than death itself.
~Latin Proverb

Capital punishment would be more effective as a preventive measure if it were administered prior to the crime.
~Woody Allen

~ ~

@Writers Platform

We all die. The goal isn’t to live forever, the goal is to create something that will.
~Chuck Palahniuk

Let no one weep for me, or celebrate my funeral with mourning; for I still live, as I pass to and fro through the mouths of men.
~Quintus Ennius

No one is actually dead until the ripples they cause in the world die away.
~Terry Pratchett

~

Well, right now… I’m not dead. But when I am, it’s like… I don’t know, I guess it’s like being inside a book that nobody’s reading…. An old one. It’s up on a library shelf, so you’re safe and everything, but the book hasn’t been checked out for a long, long time. All you can do is wait. Just hope somebody’ll pick it up and start reading.
~Tim O’Brien

Dying is like coming to the end of a long novel — you only regret it if the ride was enjoyable and left you wanting more.
~Jerome P Crabb

~~

Glass Table:

~GaryBob @NutNut Fountain

Half Moon Bridge

Long ago when the Moon was ever-round, a young man lived on the banks of the White River. Born neither high nor low, he was a man of simple means who lived off the fruit of the Land and the fish of the River. It was common knowledge that the best fish only swam in the silky light of the Moon, so every night he could be found fishing along the riverside. One night, after straying further downriver than he ever had before, the young man spotted something on the other side of the impassable waters.

A large palace was set on the hillside, its many windows alight with glowing candles as the jovial sounds of mirth and merriment drifted out into the winds. Two walls extended forth from the palace to the frothy rapids of the River, enclosing the most beautiful garden he could have imagined. Countless flowers blossomed from carefully sculpted trees, lanterns swung gently in the breeze, and succulent fruits were gathered in bowls at the base of every tree. Enthralled by the sight of such splendor, it was some time later that he noticed her.

She was beautiful and tragic. Her long black hair cascaded as gently as her tears, both mingling with the River while she seemed to ponder her reflection. It felt as if an eternity had passed before she looked up and her eyes locked with his. The Moon was at its zenith, bathing the landscape in subtle grey tones and thus lit their faces. He lost himself in its soft reflection shimmering in her deep amber eyes. They knew it was love in that fleeting instant, but both ran out of fear – she back to the depths of the garden, he into the Woods along his side of the River.

He ran for hours, unsure of what to do as an unbearable mixture of panic and excitement filled his heart. Breathless, he finally collapsed into the tall grass of a large clearing. The Moon was now long gone, with only the starlight filling the void. Catching his breath, he slowly invoked the ancient arts and turned his attention skyward.

“Who was she?” he asked the Stars.

“A princess of the land beyond the White River,” came the reply.

“Why does she weep in such a beautiful garden?”

“It is her prison. In the land beyond the White River, women are forbidden to own their own heart. She stole hers back from the high priest and as punishment she has been forever locked in the walled garden.”

“Oh how I wish to dry those bitter tears, for a single embrace, for one tender kiss… I love her. How do I reach her?” he asked, eagerly sitting up with his eyes still lost amongst the heavens.

“You cannot. The River cannot be crossed, the walls cannot be climbed – she is destined to die alone,” the Stars replied coldly.

At those words the young man snapped from his trance, stunned at the Stars’ lack of compassion. He spent a restless night in the Woods, trying to avoid the ever-watchful Stars, before finding his way home the next morning.

It was three days before he could leave his bed, three nights more before he found himself back across the River from the walled garden. She was nowhere to be seen, so he sat himself by the River and invoked the ancient arts.

“How is the evening?” he asked the River.

“Good,” was the reply, “My waters are running cool and swift, with no sun to light their depths. However, even without the sun I can see the pain in your face, the hunger in your eyes. The best fish are swimming now if you seek food.”

“It is not food I seek, it is the princess in the walled garden. I wish to rescue her from her prison, but I must pass you to do so. Could you slow yourself so I may reach there and back again?”

“No, I cannot,” the River answered with sadness, “I have felt the princess’s pain, her tears falling into me, but I cannot challenge the will of the Stars. They have fated me to run fast and strong, thus taking the life of all who pass my waters. Perhaps you could ask the Woods to bend over me?”

Turning his attention to the Woods behind him, he found they had already been listening. Before he could ask, the Woods spoke of their own accord. “We can protect you from the Stars’ eyes, but we may not challenge their control. We only know two certainties. The first is that if any human tries to cross over, through, or under the River, he will die. The second is that there is only one who can defy the Stars. Find that one and perhaps…”

“Perhaps what?” pressed the young man.

“We know nothing more.”

“Nor do I,” interrupted the River.

And so he rested, pondering the Woods’ riddle. It wasn’t long before he came to an answer.

“The Sun!” he declared triumphantly, “The Sun is the only one who can defy the Stars.”

“The Sun is but another star,” replied the Woods, “A star so bright it outshines the rest, but a star nonetheless.”

“The Moon!” came a voice in the distance. Emerging from the depths of a willow tree on the riverbank appeared the princess, having heard the whole discourse. “Only the Moon outshines the Stars.”

The two then turned their eyes to the Moon as she asked, “Moon, can you please help us cross the River?”

The Moon was silent at first, but finally replied, “Yes, I can outshine them, but even I cannot defy what the Stars have fated without great sacrifice… still, I will help.”

The Moon then began to shine brighter and brighter, more brilliant than even the Sun. The two lovers cast their eyes down, nearly blinded by the glare. When they looked up again the Moon had fallen dark, now only half its former glory.

“What happened?” the Woods asked with caution.

“I am now a servant of the Sun – all my light comes from it now,” replied the Moon, “Half my former power has gone to the Sun, the other half to that…”

Glancing down, the princess and the young man saw a bridge crossing the River. Its high arch made of pure light, a perfect half-circle. It was almost a reflection of the Moon’s new form high above and they approached it tentatively.

Thereafter, the Moon grew and faded as it rose and fell. Though crossing the River still meant death, during a half-moon the bridge of moonlight would appear. Two nights every month, in the twilight of the evanescent Moon, the two lovers could meet at the center of the bridge and together defy the Stars.

~~

If you want to know what love is, have a child. If you want to know what pain is, bury him.
~Giannina Braschi

An angel in the book of life wrote down my baby’s birth. Then whispered as she closed the book ‘too beautiful for earth’.
~unknown

We weep over the graves of infants and the little ones taken from us by death; but an early grave may be the shortest way to heaven.
~Tryon Edwards

Young, loving, and beloved! oh cruel Death!
Couldst thou not spare the treasure for a while?
~Mary Ann H Dodd Shutts

~

Sometimes losing a pet is more painful than losing a human because in the case of the pet, you were not pretending to love it.
~Amy Sedaris

Until one has loved an animal, a part of one’s soul remains unawakened.
~Anatole France

Dogs come into our lives to teach us about love, they depart to teach us about loss. A new dog never replaces an old dog, it merely expands the heart. If you have loved many dogs your heart is very big.
~Erica Jong

If there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went.
~Will Rogers

If there is a heaven, it’s certain our animals are to be there. Their lives become so interwoven with our own, it would take more than an archangel to detangle them.
~Pam Brown

~~

Exercise Prompt:   death

~~

Some people are so afraid to die that they never begin to live.
~Henry Van Dyke

Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live.
~Norman Cousins

The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.
~Author unknown

I don’t believe it’s possible to live the lives we came here to live while being perpetually braced to die.
~Sylvia Browne

~

A man does not die of love or his liver or even of old age; he dies of being a man.
~Percival Arland Ussher

I shall not die of a cold. I shall die of having lived.
~Willa Cather

While I thought that I was learning how to live, I have been learning how to die.
~Leonardo Da Vinci

Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.
~Mahatma Gandhi

~~

The Exercise:

~BarTalk:

Goals

Conquering wars
Reshaping borders
Mastering mountains
Romancing the map
Seekers and searchers
ignoring orders
Rogue sages, strayed scientists
ignoring the comfort of laps
Artist renderings
Musicians tendering
Writers reporting
History recording
Rich powers in flower
Champs catching their breath
Advances that are pending
Merely fending off death

~

recycled

sharp memory’s pains
and pangs of life
abrasive strains
corrosive stains of life
mountain top vistas
daily plains of life
cliffs and their precipice
declining steps of life
descending to depths
bringing due end to life
but
the same ascending stairs
climb, rising from death
to life,
again

~

roundabout

birth of competition
dearth of comradery
death of commodities
unearthing excellence
complexities of art

~

say what

lost opportunity
the death of a day
which was the better way
‘you look good in that’
or
‘that looks good on you’
what should I have said
misplayed phrasing
lost opportunity
the waste of a day

~

5-7-5-7-7

there aren’t tears enough
to fill a hollowed out heart
whose love died away
no engraved stone marks the grave
yet slaved for life until death

~

5-7-5 x 2

sacrificing health
frontline wall ‘tween life and death
doctors nursing breath
~
weird, how things have changed
passing strange this passing age
death no longer news

~~

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new.
~Steve Jobs

It is impossible that anything so natural, so necessary, and so universal as death, should ever have been designed by Providence as an evil to mankind.
~Jonathan Swift

If Allah created you for this world, He would have created you without death.
~Habib Umar bin Hafiz

~

This is what I would like. To play in those fields for a little longer. To spend a little more time being me before I become someone else. This is what I would like.
~Garth Stein

Death is the last enemy: once we’ve got past that I think everything will be alright.
~Alice Thomas Ellis

I take a few steps into the field, and it feels so good, so nice to be in the cool air, to smell the smells all around me. To feel the sun on my coat. I feel like I am here… I gather my strength and I start off and it feels good, like I have no age at all, like I am timeless. I pick up speed. I run… Off into the field, into the vastness of the universe ahead, I run.
~Garth Stein

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Expanded page of quotes on Death: https://wordgrove.com/death-quotes.html

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Quotes harvested from:   https://azquotes.com, http://www.quotegarden.com, https://wiseoldsayings.com

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Video Harvest:   https://vimeo.com, https://youtube.com

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