Roland Barthes, 'Camera Lucida'

"It is said that mourning, by its gradual labor, slowly erases pain; I could not, I cannot beleive this; because for me, Time eliminates the emotion of loss (I do not weep), that is all. For the rest, everything has remained motionless. For what I have lost is not a Figure (the Mother), but a being; and not a being, but a quality (a soul): not the indespensible, but the irreplaceable. I could live without the Mother (as we all do, sooner or later) ; but what life remained would be absolutely and entirely unqualifable (without quality)."