Graham GreeneNeither of us mentioned him when we woke on the morning after his death... One is not jealous of the dead, and it seemed easy to me that morning to take up our old life together.
About This Quote
To be jealous of the dead is not to be jealous of what they have done, but of what they were. It is not to regret that they are dead, but to regret that they were alive. It is not to regret what they did, but what you still think you could have done with them. "The Dead" is a poem by Rabindranath Tagore which recounts the story of two lovers who share a deep love for each other.
However, one day the woman learns that her beloved has died and she cannot bear to live without him. The woman’s reaction is to become totally absorbed by her own life and to go on with her day as if nothing had changed. She does not let the loss of her lover affect her in any way, even though she misses him terribly.
She does not allow herself to grieve or feel remorseful about how he died. Instead, she wastes time worrying about what she could have done differently to save him; she wasted time looking back at the past instead of looking forward to the future.
Source: The Quiet American
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