01

If someone tells me that time heals all wounds one more time I'm afraid this sweet Catholic Christian girl will have no other choice but to punch them in the face.

Here's the thing: time is no friend of mine. At least not today. Time is an unfeeling animal, a cruel reminder that nothing can ever stay as it is. It has been almost 4 months since my dad died and the world is moving on just fine.

Me? I want to crawl into this moment, into the depth of my own mourning; I want to burrow a hole and camp out here for a very long time.

But time moves by too quickly. A reminder that life goes on and that I must go with it.

I lived in the middle of all my moments for over the last ten years. I used to be so happy in the present. But 2021 is different. 2021's got me digging my nails into the dirt, wishing that everything would pause even just for a while. The thrust to move forward is so intense that it makes me angry on most days. I'm just not ready to let go of this ache.

When I think about how I can never go back to how things once were, how I need to keep trudging on towards an unknown shapeless future, my heart hurts. It physically, literally hurts. It makes me so sad to know that my life now divided by a very clear Before and After. All the inspirational speakers and well-meaning friends who've never lost a parents need to back off with their empty diatribes. I don't want your blanket statements, your pity or your religion. I don't want the echo of flimsy promises that carry no weight. I don't want to hear that all will be well one day.

Because Before was better. There is no silver lining, no grand consolation. Before was better.

My secret vendetta against time is simple -- I am afraid of forgetting. I am afraid that time will sweep my grief away, but it will bury the dead and erode the memory of my father completely. It has never been in my nature to do so but I suppose death makes you desperate: I am clinging to the past. I am resisting the ebb and flow of time. It is a futile act but I'm stubborn. I am, after all, my father's daughter.

What really heals all wounds are the things that suspend time, the things that make it bearable and less of a predator, things like silence or laughter or a pilgrimage to someplace beautiful. What heals all wounds is not escaping the hurt but wrestling it until it feels more like a splinter and less like a cross. What heals all wounds is letting the wound be a wound -- maybe for now or maybe for always -- and trusting that while nothing is inevitable, everything is (at the very least) possible.

For now, therapy in the form of poetry:

A Blessing for the Brokenhearted

Jan Richardson

Let us agree

for now

that we will not say

the breaking

makes us stronger

or that it is better

to have this pain

than to have done

without this love.

Let us promise

we will not

tell ourselves

time will heal

the wound,

when every day

our waking

opens it anew.

Perhaps for now

it can be enough

to simply marvel

at the mystery

of how a heart

so broken

can go on beating,

as if it were made

for precisely this --

as if it knows

the only cure for love

is more of it,

as if it sees

the heart's sole remedy

for breaking

is to love still,

as if it trusts

that its own

persistent pulse

is the rhythm

of a blessing

we cannot

begin to fathom

but will save us

nonetheless.