They had, finally, the only thing anyone really wants in life: someone to hold your hand when you die.
Interpretation
The quote expresses the deep human desire for companionship and comfort, especially in the face of death.
Lorrie Moore's quote encapsulates one of the most fundamental aspects of human existence: the need for connection and support. It emphasizes that, at the end of life, what truly matters is not material possessions or accolades, but having someone by your side who offers love and comfort during the most vulnerable moments. This deep bond underscores the significance of relationships and the warmth of human contact when faced with the inevitability of death.
In practice
In a eulogy, you might share this quote to highlight the importance of having loved ones around us in our final moments.
You couldn't pretend you had lost nothing... you had to begin there, not let your blood freeze over. If your heart turned away at this, it would turn away at something greater, then more and more until your heart stayed averted, immobile, your imagination redistributed away from the world and back only toward the bad maps of yourself, the sour pools of your own pulse, your own tiny, mean, and pointless wants.
I tried not to think about my life. I did not have any good solid plans for it long-term - no bad plans either, no plans at all - and the lostness of that, compared with the clear ambitions of my friends (marriage, children, law school), sometimes shamed me. Other times in my mind I defended such a condition as morally and intellectually superior - my life was open and ready and free - but that did not make it less lonely.
She was not good on the phone. She needed the face, the pattern of eyes, nose, trembling mouth... People talking were meant to look at a face, the disastrous cupcake of it, the hide-and-seek of the heart dashing across. With a phone, you said words, but you never watched them go in. You saw them off at the airport but never knew whether there was anyone there to greet them when they got off the plane.
No matter that you anticipate a thing; you get so used to it as part of the future that its actuality, its arrival, its force and presence, startles you, takes you by surprise, as would a ghost suddenly appearing in the room wearing familiar perfume and boots.
When I was in graduate school, I had a teacher who said to me, 'Women writers should marry somebody who thinks writing is cute. Because if they really realised what writing was, they would run a mile.'
She was unequal to anyone's wistfulness. She had made too little of her life. Its loneliness shamed her like a crime.
After all, life hasn't much to offer except youth, and I suppose for older people, the love of youth in others.
The impetus to grow and live intensely is so powerful in me I cannot resist it. I will work, I will love my husband, but I will fulfill myself.
I will not close my eyes, neither those in my head nor those in my soul, as the ship carries me away, along with my future, my dreams, and my beliefs. Buru Island is no happy land somewhere; it's but a way station on my journey in life—though to believe even that much will require no small measure of hope.
Eating, drinking. sleeping, pro-creating. A little laughter, a lot of tears. Is this all there is to life? Don't die like a worm on the surface of the planet. WAKE UP and be all that you can be, you are so much more than that.
Katrina silenced me for two years. I wrote a 12-page essay on my experience in Katrina, and that's it. I didn't write anything for, like, two, two and a half years after Katrina hit because it was so traumatic.
In the English language there are orphans and widows, but there is no word for the parents who loses a child.
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