Terence, the Roman poet, said: “Time is the great healer, a
sure assuager of human sorrow.” Many people seem to agree with him as they have
told me after David died that time will heal. It has been thirteen years now
and I decided to write about what time does. Can time really heal the deep gash
that a parent gets when the parent loses a child?
Some of my hopes and dreams are dead and buried from my
sight forever. These cannot be changed by time. My son will never marry and
bear children. My son will never call me again. My son will never visit me
again. My son vanished and time cannot bring him back.
The feeling of sorrow cannot be healed by time. Time seems
to dull what I feel but it does not change what I feel. It has allowed me to
get used to the new life without my son but has not allowed me to be consoled
that he is gone. The days go on and my emptiness continues without my son. Time
has not taken away my tears and my pain. Time has not removed my longing for my
son or has taken away my loneliness. What time did was increase the intervals
between episodes of pain and tears. I still feel the same intensity of pain.
The tears still flow and in fact my eyes leak continuously with tears at any
reminder of my son. Although these reminders continue to touch my heart with
pain, I want to remember them over and over again as memories of him make my
life worth living. However, the frequency of what I call “fits of despair” have
decreased for which I am thankful. What has increased instead is the longing
and the missing.
