The man without fear... but not without grief.
Alice and Bob loved each other very much and were happy together for a long time. But something happened to Bob. Maybe he died. Maybe he disappeared without a trace one day. Maybe there was a breakup. Whatever the reason may be, Bob is gone and Alice is sad and lonely. So every now and then she comforts herself by cradling something that reminds her of Bob; his clothing, a keepsake, a photo, something along those lines.
A particularly common version is hugging the headstone of somebody who has died or holding the body of a loved one for a prolonged period.
Sometimes part of a Sad-Times Montage or overlaps with a Lost Love Montage, and is likely to be done by a Heartbroken Badass. If a specific item is being held, it may be a Tragic Keepsake, especially if it came from someone whose death was a Cynicism Catalyst.
Compare and contrast Pietà Plagiarism, Cradling Your Kill, and Died in Your Arms Tonight.
As this is a Death Trope, unmarked spoilers abound. Beware.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Played for Laughs in Asteroid in Love. In the beginning of the twenty-second chapter, adapted in the seventh episode, Mai is found holding onto Mikage's belongings in this position while going Ocular Gushers, still under the shock of being named as the club president.
- In Attack on Titan, Armin holds onto the straw hat his grandfather had given him before being sent onto the pointless expedition to retake Wall Maria, to kill off a good portion of the citizens to avoid a food shortage, and cries into it when learning his grandfather was dead.
- Fou-lu does this with Mami's bells in the Comic-Book Adaptation of Breath of Fire IV (and actually to a lesser extent in the original game as well). An especially tragic example as said Mami was literally used as the human warhead in a Fantastic Nuke in an attempt by the very empire Fou-lu founded to kill him. It merely makes him go Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds instead.
- Destiny of the Shrine Maiden: Chikane holds Himeko's uniform this way when the latter is going shopping with Souma. Then things goes to hell in a vegetable basket.
- In Fist of the North Star, Souther dies in the arms of his long-since mummified master.
- Yuki Amano of Future Diary should be the poster child of this trope. After becoming the new God of Space/Time he is so crippled by the loss of his beloved that he just sits there staring at the last entry in his diary Yuno died for 10,000 years straight despite having just inherited god powers.
- Hayate does this with the pendant left behind by Reinforce immediately after her Heroic Sacrifice in the last episode of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's. The moment itself is also rather ironic, since Hayate spent most of her childhood as a friendless orphan, yet the first time she's ever shown to be lonely happened while she was literally surrounded by friends and family.
- Shinn from Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny does it with his late little sister's cellphone.
- Neon Genesis Evangelion: Misato briefly does this to Shinji’s plugsuit after the latter ostensibly disappears into the essence of the Evangelion itself.
Misato: "What good is your goddamned science if it can’t even save one life?!"
- Puella Magi Madoka Magica:
- Homura holds Madoka's ribbon this way after the latter's ascension into cosmic law.
"Madoka... Madoka..."
- The Spin-Off manga The Different Story shows Mami Tomoe clutching Kyouko's ribbon in this manner in the final chapter, after she herself has committed suicide.
- Homura holds Madoka's ribbon this way after the latter's ascension into cosmic law.
- Near the end of the Rurouni Kenshin OVA Trust and Betrayal, Kenshin cradles the body of Tomoe after her death. Later we see Kenshin sitting under a tree with Tomoe's shawl wrapped around him. In a semi-reversal, we see the ghostly image of Tomoe wrapping her arms around him.
- Usagi from Sailor Moon regards her music box locket this way when Tuxedo Mask is captured and brainwashed by the Dark Kingdom.
- Despite its age and wear, Tsumugi of Sweetness & Lightning refuses to let Kouhei (her dad) replace her bag because it was handmade for her by her late mother.
Comic Books
- Daredevil: When Elektra died, Daredevil was shown cradling her tombstone on the cover of #182.
- Robin (1993): After a particularly bad night in which he ended up getting to some hostages too late to save a man from being murdered right in front of his daughter and was then badly injured in a fight later on, Tim stumbled to his parents' joint headstone and clung to it briefly while lamenting his failure. Batman showed up to take him home out of the rain almost immediately.
- Spider-Man: The cover for Spider-Man: Reign #1 had Spider-Man hugging Mary Jane's tombstone.
Fan Works
- In a really poignant scene, the protagonist of Racer and the Geek cradles his rifle while undergoing a mental breakdown.
- In A Prize for Three Empires, Carol Danvers visits her friend Mar-Vell's grave and embraces the memorial stone, crying because of her inability to save him.
She called the X-Men, as little as she liked it, and learned from them the location of the world where Mar-Vell had breathed his last. Then she went there, and saw his memorial stone, and embraced it.
She thought of the alien who had been a friend to her, who had enabled her to become a super-hero through a genetic gift. She wondered if, somehow, a transplant of genes or blood from her body to his could have saved him.
Probably not. The cancer was too far into him. But at least she would have tried. - A fanmade audiodrama
for Warhammer 40,000 starts off with a Blood Angels Space Marine breaking down in tears at the sight of the destruction of his beloved Land Raider IFV, whose Machine-Spirit he had bonded with. So deep is his grief that he hugs "her" with all his strength, and it is treated with all the gravity of finding a loved one Stuffed in the Fridge.
- Infinity Train: Knight of the Orange Lily: Upon seeing Lampetia destroyed by Paul London, Specter is only given her heart to protect until she can regenerate her body. He can only clutch it in agony before screaming her name.
- My Brother Cain, My Brother Abel: After Caleb Wittebane dies in Evelyn’s arms, she refuses to let go of his body. Her parents have to physically pull her away in order to get her to let go so they can get her to safety.
Films — Animation
- An Extremely Goofy Movie: After Max leaves for college, Goofy goes into his now-vacant room and coddles the stuffed bear he had left behind.
- The Lion King (1994): When Simba discovers Mufasa's body after the stampede, he tries to wake him up, before resting himself under his paw as he did towards the beginning.
Films — Live-Action
- Boba Fett is seen cradling the helmet of his dead "father" Jango in Attack of the Clones.
- The Black Stork: After Leffingwell Jr. leaves home, his mother sleeps holding a pair of his old crutches.
- At the end of Brokeback Mountain, it's revealed that Ennis still holds on to Jack's shirt, just as Jack held on to his while they were separated.
- In the movie He Got Game, when the governor lets Denzel Washington's character out of jail temporarily so that he can convince his son (a star basketball player) to go to the governor's university, Denzel makes a stop at the cemetery to see and then embrace the grave of his wife, whom he accidentally killed years ago.
- In the Stanley Kubrick adaptation of Lolita, Charlotte Haze cradles the funeral urn of her last husband after discovering that Humbert only married her to get close to her daughter.
- La Reine Margot ends with the title character in her carriage cradling the embalmed head of her lover Môle, executed by decapitation.
- Max Payne has a scene where Max goes to a storage unit and reveals that he kept everything from the house where his family was murdered, even the papers that his wife had on her desk.
- In John Ford's The Searchers one of the many visual hints of Ethan and Martha's relationship in the past is when Martha hugs Ethan's coat out of sight of other characters. Martha eventually married Ethan's brother and started a family.
- Dren does this in the movie Splice with a cat while her "parents" are away.
- Avengers: Infinity War: Seeing how he lost his mother in Thor: The Dark World and his father in Thor: Ragnarok, Thor has officially lost his entire family following the death of Loki. As the ship goes up in flames, all Thor can do is crawl towards Loki's corpse and cradle his dead body.
- In White Frog, Nick lies in bed clutching a photo of himself with his dead older brother Chaz.
Literature
- In the first Survivor Dogs book, Lucky finds his sister Bella sniffing a cushion that belonged to her missing owners. She's embarrassed by Lucky finding her that way and says that the items help her sleep.
- Ayla does this in Valley of the Horses. After being exiled from the Clan and forced to leave her infant son behind, the only thing she has left of him is the bag/cloak she used to have for carrying him.
- In Evidence of Things Not Seen, Tara sleeps curled around her murdered father's ashes.
- In A Mango-Shaped Space, Mia sleeps holding a stuffed Tweety Bird, which was her dead cat Mango's favorite toy.
Live-Action TV
- Better Call Saul: Invoked by Jimmy after his reinstatement is denied because the hearing members didn't think he was sincere to his devotion to the law, as he never mentioned his late brother Chuck (the already strained relationship between the two deteriorated in the months leading up to Chuck's death, and Jimmy's suspension was because of Chuck to begin with, so it's clear Jimmy still holds a grudge). To make himself look better in the appeal, he makes several public displays of mock grief, including being seen cradling and talking to Chuck's tombstone (although the "talking" is just mumbling gibberish until someone gets close enough)
- Breaking Bad: After Jane's death, Jesse can be seen cradling his cell phone, then calling her number just to hear her voice mail, until her line is finally disconnected and he can no longer hear her voice.
- Buffyverse:
- Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
- After Angel turns evil, Buffy curls up in her bed weeping, clutching the claddagh ring he gave her in the previous episode. She brings out the ring again the following season, guilty over having been forced to kill him. Eventually, she decides to move on and leaves the ring at the place where he died (ironically, Angel chooses that moment to come Back from the Dead).
- When Tara breaks up with Willow due to Willow's abuse of magic, one sign of Willow's sadness is that she takes a set of Tara's clothes, uses her magic to give them shape and form, and then has it hold her.
- Dawn curls up next to the recharging Buffybot, showing how she misses her dead sister (who had not been resurrected at that point).
- Angel:
- Wes is seen holding Fred's stuffed rabbit as he packs her stuff away after her death.
- After Doyle's Heroic Sacrifice, Cordelia laments that he had no Iconic Item she could use to fulfill this trope. She's less than impressed to find that Doyle did leave something for her — his ability to experience extremely painful visions.
- Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
- How I Met Your Mother:
- One episode had Marshall away, staying with his mother, and Lily getting lonely to the point of dressing up a pillow in Marshall's clothes. It became a Running Gag.
Lily: I call him "Marshpillow", and he calls me... nothing, because he's a pillow.
- In the episode "How Your Mother Met Me" of How I Met Your Mother, The Mother is seen twice cradling things when she thinks about Max, her boyfriend who died.
- In a scene where she apparently has just returned from his funeral, she opens his present. It's a ukulele and she holds it, pressing it to her chest.
- Years later, she hugs a pillar on a patio when she tries to connect with him and sort of asks him if she is ready to let go.
- One episode had Marshall away, staying with his mother, and Lily getting lonely to the point of dressing up a pillow in Marshall's clothes. It became a Running Gag.
- Monk reveals in one episode that, after his wife died, he couldn't bring himself to throw away—or even move—any of her belongings.
- Sons of Anarchy when Jax finds Tara murdered on the floor, he breaks down, cradling her, apologizing for the violence he brought into her life. He is still holding her and sobbing when the police and the DA arrive.
- Supernatural: This occurs in the episode "All Hell Breaks Loose Part 1" of Season 2. After Sam is stabbed in the back by Jake and dies while Dean is holding onto him, Dean enwraps him in a hug as he begins to cry out of grief. Overlaps with Final First Hug.
- True Blood:
- After Talbot is murdered, Russell keeps a glass jar filled with Talbot's blood and other bodily remains with him throughout the rest of the season. He can be seen talking to it and carrying it everywhere.
- Russell kills a male prostitute that superficially resembles Talbot, talks to the body as if it was Talbot, then cradles the body in a way that is half this trope, half Cradling Your Kill.
- The X-Files, "Within": Mulder is missing, probably abducted by aliens, and Scully goes to his apartment. She notices his blue shirts lying on the bed. She takes one and lies down on the bed, cradling the shirt in her arms.
Music
- Robert Palmer's "Johnny and Mary": He needs all the world to confirm, that he ain't lonely.
- The song "Whiskey Lullaby" has this line; We found her with her face down in the pillow. Clinging to his picture for dear life.
- The famous George Gershwin song They Can't Take Away From Me sung by Fred Astaire, Frank Sinatra, and many many others. It's actually a Break-Up Song but with an amicable air that while the relationship ended, it wasn't a mistake to have started it:
We may never, never meet again
On that bumpy road to love
Still I'll always,
Always keep the memory of
The way you hold your knife
The way we danced until three.
The way you've changed my life.
No, no - they can't take that away from me.
Roleplay
- From AJCO: Egg gives Crez her badge the night before she is expelled from the Silo into almost certain death, pleading with him to deliver it to Kube. Crez fulfills this promise, and the poor cactus clutches it tightly while fighting back tears.
- In Dawn of a New Age: Oldport Blues, after Luna turns into lightning and then is absorbed into the Dark Dragon's body, her best friend Ivy takes the jacket that was left behind, that she made specifically to protect Luna, and covers herself with it while screaming.
Webcomics
- Seen in the Erfworld prequel that details the backstory of the Necromancer Wanda. After Wanda's brother Tommy is poisoned and killed by a woman he loved, Wanda manages to animate his body, but despite it being the best work she's ever done in raising the dead, she realizes that the undead version of Tommy isn't the brother that she loved, and never will be. Her first order to it is for Un-Tommy to hold her while she cries.
Western Animation
- In the DuckTales episode "Hero for Hire", after the police recover the Webbed Wonder suit from the bay, seemingly confirming that Launchpad was killed, Scrooge hugs it as he cries.
- For all that he is a Jerkass to Stimpy, Ren from The Ren & Stimpy Show did this twice in "The Big Shot" after Stimpy leaves to become a Hollywood star. First, he breaks down in tears at the sight of one of Stimpy's hairballs, and later in the episode, he cradles a bag of kitty litter with Stimpy's face drawn on it.
- SpongeBob SquarePants plays this for laughs in the episode Clams when Mr. Krab's millionth dollar gets eaten by a giant clam. There is a cutaway where Mr. Krabs is dressed as a mourning widow and hugging a tombstone representing his millionth dollar.
