After-Orts #94
I begin to love this little creature, and to anticipate his birth as a fresh twist to a knot, which I do not wish to untie.
-- Mary Wollstonecraft, in a letter (June 6, 1797) to William Godwin, referring to their child-to-be, with whom she was six months pregnant.
I have no doubt of seeing the animal today.
-- Wollstonecraft, in a note to Godwin, August 30, 1797. She was in labor, the midwife had been sent for, and Wollstonecraft was confident of a speedy delivery. Late that evening she gave birth to a baby girl. On the morning of September 10 she died from complications of the birth.
https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/roundtable/fresh-twist-knot/
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Life would be pretty empty without your friends. But not as empty as death.
— Michael Kinsley, Old Age - a Beginner’s Guide
The dead relatives don't go away, though: they're behind you, around you, just out of sight. It's as if as parents and grandparents and aunts and uncles die you acquire over time, person by person, a silent, invisible family just like the one you had before, only now, if you're lucky, they are entirely benevolent and full of wisdom.
-- Katha Pollitt, Good-Bye, Lenin, in Learning to Drive and Other Life Stories
The living leave,
they move away;
the dead are with us
every day.
-- Garrison Keillor