The Beginner's Goodbye Quotes
"The strangest thing about my wife’s return from the dead was how other people reacted."
"Other people pretended not to recognize either one of us."
"I like to think I wouldn’t, but I might have."
"I had moved in by then with my sister, who lived in our parents’ old place in north Baltimore."
"I may be different from other people but I’m no unluckier."
"Sometimes I think I am unluckier than other people but much, much happier."
"She was short and plump and serious-looking."
"My sister said Dorothy was too old for me, but that was just because I had foolishly told the truth when I was asked."
"But there I suppose I’m fooling myself, because probably everyone thinks he has some unique claim on happiness."
"But I’ll bet I would have been left-handed in any case, because I have excellent penmanship and I didn’t need to struggle for it."
"I daydream of switching to standard pedals, but the Motor Vehicle people have these absurd regulations."
"So I adopted a sort of Zen approach. I lived in the moment."
"Oh, why, why, why did I have to realize on that particular afternoon? Why could I not have said, 'Look. Clearly you’re half starved, and it seems to be making you fractious. Let’s go out to the kitchen and find you something to eat'?"
"I wished I did have pain. I hated my body. I hated sitting there like a dummy while stronger, abler men fought to rescue my wife."
"And I should learn to do without all those C words, Nandina said. It seemed to her I was piling them on deliberately—'can' and 'could,' every chance I got."
"It was obvious that she wouldn’t have been aware of my touch, in any event."
"What I really wanted to say was, 'This is a specific person, do you understand? Not just some patient. I want to make sure you realize that.'"
"I walked up and down the corridors with a sense of something stretching thin, fragile elastic threads stretching between me and Dorothy."
"An aging girl, was what she was, and had been from earliest childhood."
"Sometimes the most recent moments can seem so long, long ago."
"Anything is manageable if it's divided into small enough increments, was the theory; even life's most complicated lessons."
"That was one of the worst things about losing your wife, I found: your wife is the very person you want to discuss it all with."
"I used to dwell on these shortcomings now. It wasn’t only that I was wondering why they had ever annoyed me. I was hoping they would annoy me still, so that I could stop missing her."
"It seemed heartless that I should think to go in for my semiannual dental checkup, but I did. And then I bought myself some new socks. Socks, of all things! So trivial! But all my old ones had holes in the toes."
"The line would end with the two of us. It was probably just as well, I figured."
"It shows how defeated I felt just then that the thought of staying forever seemed almost tempting."
"It was no wonder I’d never had children. They would have made me too sad."
"You would think oxford shirts would be timeless, but this one was kind of spindly in the collar."
"That was the first time I admitted to myself that I couldn’t face the sight of my house."
"Surely there were people you could hire to do that."
"Why was it that so many men viewed their military service as the defining event of their lives?"
"Do not assume that, having issued your directives, you can lean back and let your contractor run wild."
"I can’t explain what happened. My eyes filled with tears and I didn’t trust my voice."
"It’s better than not being in AA if he ought to be."
"Workmen who persist in saying 'Mr.,' even after you’ve told them not to, always strike me as deliberately off-putting."
"I always worried our older clients might feel insulted by Peggy. Her honeyed voice and her overly respectful manner could have been viewed as, let’s say, patronizing."
"I don’t know how. They don’t offer any courses in this; I haven’t had any practice."
"People like complete sets. It fulfills some kind of collector’s instinct."
"We treated each other like two competent adults."
"I had no business complaining about her. She had taken me in without hesitation when I didn’t have anywhere else to go."
"Living in this house again was not half bad, really. In a way it was kind of cozy."
"It’s like the grief has been covered over with some kind of blanket. It’s still there, but the sharpest edges are muffled, sort of. Then, every now and then, I lift a corner of the blanket, just to check, and—whoa! Like a knife! I’m not sure that will ever change."
"I’m not saying that we didn’t encounter a few little bumps in the road. Every couple has to make some adjustments, isn’t that so? Especially when they’ve been accustomed to living on their own."
"I wanted her to start thinking of me in a more, so to speak, social light."
"You probably can’t imagine that, but mark my words. And I want to say right here and now, Aaron, that I would wholeheartedly welcome her. I would welcome anyone you brought home to me, I promise."
"In a way, we wouldn’t have to go into great detail. Nothing excessively medical, ha ha."
"I could feel those rough, pudgy fingers slipping stealthily between mine and I would have to struggle not to break into a smile."
"For days on end I stayed suspended, waiting for her to come back."
"She seemed as real as the NO PARKING sign beside her. Today she wore her black knit top, the one she’d worn the night we first kissed, but it was scrunched beneath the slant of her satchel strap as if she had just come from work."
"I could have told her that I worried more about my life stretching on and on. But I didn’t want her going all compassionate again."
"Then I turned and started back to Nandina’s. I hadn’t so much as glanced at our house. What did I care about our house? I walked in a kind of trance, keeping my gait as nearly level as possible, as if Dorothy had been a liquid and now I was brimful of her and moving slowly and gently so as not to spill over."
"I’ve been a widow longer than I’ve been a wife."
"Sometimes I even spoke out loud to him, in the early years, begging him to show himself."
"And every now and then, I almost think she does show herself."
"I realized that must sound crazy. But maybe she just hates to see me so sad."
"I’d catch a glimpse of him from time to time. Just here and there, you know? Kind of shambling around a project, looking to see what was what."
"I think I was his unfinished business. He was sorry he’d given up on me while I was sowing my wild oats, and he came back to make sure I’d turned out okay."
"You wouldn’t question your sanity, because you couldn’t bear to think this wasn’t real."
"I wanted realness, even if it was flawed and pockmarked."
"But put yourself in my place. Call to mind a person you’ve lost that you will miss to the end of your days, and then imagine happening upon that person out in public."
"I had learned by now that when the sunlight hit the spray in a certain way I could occasionally, almost, see things. Not Dorothy, unfortunately. But one time I saw this sort of column, an ornate Corinthian column rising up and sprouting apart at the top and then dissolving into particles."
"Not the least little flaw, he said. I had to take his word for it. Would I know a flaw if I saw one?"
"No couple buying wedding rings wants to be reminded that someday one of them will have to accept the other one’s ring from a nurse or an undertaker."
"This business of not labeling photos reminded me of those antique cemeteries where the names have worn off the gravestones and you can’t tell who is buried there."
"Photos have a way of frumping people; have you noticed?"
"We should have taken lessons or something; that’s what I tell myself."
"I felt as if heavy furniture were being moved around in my head."
"We go around and around in this world, and here we go again."
"The smart thing to do is, pay attention while they’re living."