Time heals all wounds?
“It has been said, 'time heals all wounds.' I do not agree. The wounds remain. In time, the mind, protecting its sanity, covers them with scar tissue and the pain lessens. But it is never gone.”
- Rose Kennedy, wife of Joseph Patrick Kennedy Sr. (1890 - 1995)
I agree. If you have lost someone you truly loved, you never get over it. Time doesn’t ease the pain. You don’t feel better. You never stop grieving for them.
If you have lost someone dear to you, then you will know what I am talking about. You go about your daily life – because life does go on (yes, that saying is true), but all of a sudden you get a blinding flash of grief that pierces you like a knife, and it’s suddenly hard to breathe, your throat has a huge lump in it, and you feel like curling up in a corner and just howling out your pain.
The pain doesn’t go away - ever. You just learn to live with it. People assume that grief has an ending point and that you will be “back to normal” after that. But the bond that you had with your loved one carries on after their loss – you do not recover from grief.
On each significant date - birthdays, Christmas, New Year, a wedding anniversary – you wish they were here. You rail against cancer, drunk drivers, old age – whatever caused their passing. It’s not fair. Why them? Why couldn’t it happen to someone else, not someone you loved?
Our society doesn’t allow us to grieve properly. They expect you to suddenly return to normal life after only a short time and feel uncomfortable if you actually tell them how you feel when they enquire. “How are you?” they say, not really wanting to know. People you thought were friends disappear from your life because they don’t know what to do or say. And you are left high and dry, with only your family and true friends to understand what you are going through.
I think they understood grief better in earlier days. Many cultures understood how important it was to mourn. The Victorians went into mourning for at least a year, and wore black as a signal to everyone that they were grieving. People of the Jewish faith sat shivah for seven days and the full mourning period lasted a year. It didn’t mean that after that period of time that you suddenly felt better or forgot – it just meant that people understood how you felt instead of expecting you to carry on as before.
I still grieve. For my father, for my grandparents, for all the people I’ve loved who have gone from this world – I miss them and I always will do.
Happy 82nd Birthday Dad - I miss you every day. x x x