In the end, only three things matter:
how much you loved, how gently you lived,
and how gracefully you let go of things not meant for you.

--attributed to the Buddha,
and paraphrased by many

If you know wilderness
in the way that you know love,
you would be unwilling to let it go...
This is the story of our past
and it will be the story of our future.
--Terry Tempest Williams

Never give up on something you can't go a single day without thinking about.
--Anonymous

(I am suspicious of the word "never". It goes right in with "always" and "should". And I notice that after a while, the thought occurrences of a person who is gone do decrease. Maybe never completely gone, but at least not so torturous. I do however think that this quote, as a mantra, is destructive by encouraging obsessive thought, and will impede the process of letting go, and hence I apologize for posting it. I just had to.)

Welcome to the Age of Overparenting
How I learned to let my kids be kids.
By Katherine Ozment
http://www.bostonmagazine.com/scripts/print/article.php?asset_idx=329920
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