When I was told (what seemed like) not so long ago that time heals wounds even as deep as these, I was positive that no one who could say that to my face had ever experienced a pain such as mine. Had they never felt their heart physically ache with every horrible beat? Did they not know the weight of such an absence? And how could they not see the cruelty in patronizing the newly aggrieved with such platitudes?
Loyalty would dictate this cannot be true; if mere time can take away the pain, the hole that is left in my heart, then I must be unfaithful to the memory and love of a man to whom I pledged my life. Grief originally felt like my cross to bear; the only emotion I had left to tie me to my husband; the last piece of my marriage that I desperately had to protect.
read that again
I sought to protect my grief.
No one says that in the books. No one talks about that in the meetings. No one mentions the sick and twisted thought that as long as you are afflicted by sadness, whether openly or in private, he is still relevant to your life. And so you poke at the wound to make sure it still stings. You feel the hole to make sure a little piece of you is still missing. That grief becomes the only physical reminder of something and someone that will never be tangible again.
I tried valiantly for some time to hold on to Roger through that grief, but at some point (I don't know if I can even recognize when that point was for me), you realize that the sting has become a warm memory that makes you smile instead of cry. And that hole was merely a reshaping into something that truly can be relevant in my new life.
I don't know when it happened. I'm not sure how it happened.
But I am thankful:
Time heals all wounds.
Even the ones you know it can't.
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