They say time heals all wounds, but I would beg to differ. This doesn’t always work. I’d say time allows scabbing to form. Time allows the heart to hurt less because it forms a natural bandage, a protective mechanism. But the scabby heart, in my experience, isn’t as resilient or healed as one would like. Scabbing helps with the immediate pain. It means the mourner has come up with ways of not looking at, feeling, pondering the cause of the pain. Scabbing means there’s a bridge to emotionally walk over the wound but scabbing is not healing. There’s still a painful hole, a raw wound under that scar. All it takes is a nudge, a bump, a thought, or a trigger, and the scab comes off. The pain is still there, just as raw as ever. I met up with friends recently, fellow mourners with fresh wounds of their own. One had lost her husband and one her father, all in much more recent history. Every time I spoke, the tears came. The pain seemed to be there and real and visceral, just beneath that scabby surface, for all of us to one degree or another.
For me, a healed heart is one that can look at pictures of the one that was lost and cherish the memories rather than continue to hurt. Some people come to this state quickly and without a lot of fanfare. They have the faith to know their loved one is happier, healthier, better off somehow than they were here. The people with this kind of faith can immediately point to the belief that they will be with their loved one again. These people can smile in peace and can continue to feel joy even just after loss. I would find a short-lived peace, the buffer from the worst of the pain that came with feeling the Holy Ghost and people’s prayers. But the pain was still very real and very present just beneath the surface.
Granted, what seems to be perfect and instant healing may be an illusion, what we as outsiders see. It may be for a while, they, too, had the raw then scabbed hearts that mourn behind closed doors. Or it may also be they truly experienced such instantaneous healing, with the power of the atonement, the power of the Lord who overcame pain, sin, and death to heal all wounds and to buffer our pains and our hurts.
As an outsider, it’s hard to say what’s really going on under the surface with other people. The LDS father of a little girl who died in the Sandy Hook shooting immediately extended his forgiveness and displayed what appeared to be a healed, joyous heart. I don’t think I could do that. Six years after my baby died, I’m still feeling only partially healed under the scabs. Maybe to an outsider, I look like I’m healed and happy. I have my moments when I feel healed. I feel happy. I am able to function and sometimes even look at the pictures and cherish the moments. But so many times, just thinking about her or hearing about her or seeing my picture brings tears to my eyes. I know we will be together again. I know my angel is here with me as often as she can be. I know these things to be true. And maybe I’ll just have to cherish that I no longer [very often] become so incapacitated with hysterical sobbing that I can’t function, can’t think, only feel a gushing hole where my heart used to be. I can enjoy those days when I don’t ponder [very deeply] the pain of miscarriage after miscarriage with no rainbow baby in sight. I can feel [at least for the moment] healed and whole.
But I also know I’ll never be the same person I was before. That’s not how healing works. It is not a reset button to days of innocence before the emotional firestorm came. It’s a new, older, empathetic self that forms in the place of the innocent. It’s someone who understands these things CAN happen to me, but that I can survive it. It’s a stronger heart that forms under the scabs. The moments of intense and searing pain still happen, but I don’t have to be consumed by them. I can cherish those times of peace and joy and enjoy the moments with the children I can still hold. I have been healed to some extent. But that doesn’t mean I got over it. One never gets over it. One just gets through it the best one can and prays for healing that can even---eventually with faith and the power of God--come.
