This is the hour of lead or, Things that come to mind

After great pain a formal feeling comes--
The nerves sit ceremonious like tombs;
The stiff Heart questions--was it He that bore?
And yesterday--or centuries before?

The feet, mechanical, go round
A wooden way
Of ground, or air, or ought,
Regardless grown,
A quartz contentment, like a stone.

This is the hour of lead
Remembered if outlived,
As freezing persons recollect the snow--
First chill, then stupor, then the letting go.

~ Emily Dickinson

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There are truths that can only be discovered thorugh suffering or from the critical vantage point of extreme situations.

~ Ignacio Martin-Baro, S.J.

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Faced with death of those they love, these characters of mine don’t seek some vague afterlife. What they seek, what they demand, against all reason, is the return of the loved one in all his or her familiarity, ‘the profile and the grace,’ as Lorca called it, ‘the answers quick and keen, the honest look,’ in Millay’s poem. My characters, my fictional Catholics, understand the Church’s promise of eternal life, but nevertheless find it lacking. For what they really want is life returned to them in all its magnificence and love and heartbreaking detail. Life uncompromised by death, death utterly defeated. Anything else is unacceptable.

~ Alice McDermott