It’s an old cliché that people love to attach to grief, telling grievers that time will make things better and ease their pain.
I get the sentiment and why we want to believe it’s so. After all, people do survive loss, even the most devastating kinds. We watch from afar as they pick up the pieces of their lives and continue on. They seem good. Healed even! From the distance, their loved one’s death seems to barely affect them. We assume that time has done its healing work and that they, like we, have moved on.
Yet here I am on the cusp of 4 years without my husband and it still hurts. A lot. I’ve done a lot of grief-work, found community with other widows, made the choice over and over to continue on when I felt like I had nothing to live on for and slowly, day by day, learned to live without Greg by my side. But grief is like the blood that runs through my veins: seldom visible unless something sharp and painful brings it to the surface.
I go about my days feeling paper-cut type pains that remind me of my grief but are seen by no one else. Little things that remind me Greg can bring a smile or tears or both. Casual references to death or heart-related issues bring a flood of memories I’d rather forget. Tender moments observed between a father and child make me long for what my son will never have again. A thousand little cuts every day.
But some cuts make me bleed. Some cuts bring grief right up to the surface. The holidays that haven’t felt right since Greg died. The weight of parenting a growing child who really needs his dad. The decision fatigue and overwhelm from handling every aspect of life alone and knowing that no rescue is coming: it’s sink or swim and I’m swimming with a child who’s depending on me to keep us afloat.
Time has forced me to accept what I hate and rise to the occasion, but it hasn’t made everything okay. It doesn’t erase memories and it can’t be rewound. It forces me forward into new situations in which I could really use my husband by my side. It makes me grow as I watch my child grow up and enter new seasons that I have to handle alone.
Time is not a healer. Time teaches but it does not numb.
So here I go into another holiday season, kicking and screaming inside. I don’t want to face it again without Greg but I will because life keeps going and holidays keep coming, whether we welcome them or not. It will hurt and there will be moments of joy. I will miss Greg immensely and I will do my best to be present with those who are here. I will shed tears because it still hurts and I will smile because joy and sorrow can co-exist. I will long for holidays of yesteryear and remember that I have a future and a hope kept in Heaven for me.
It will be good, hard, messy, beautiful and sad because time cannot heal grief. Grief - in its ever-changing form- is here to stay.
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