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Time & My Hunchback

I've been living without my son for 27 months and 27 days. Do I count days? No, there really is no need to count days, I know he's not here, I taste it with each breath, I live it with each thought, I know it with every moment of each day.

People often offer platitudes such as, "may time bring you healing." They naively think it true and thus present it as an offering of hope in times of despair. I begrudge no one who offers sympathy sincerely. Somehow it's a solace to the one offering that time may actually provide the recipient with the miracle of healing.

But time does not heal. Time only brings a change to grief.

Time does not alleviate the sorrow or diminish the anguish that comes with the death of a child. Time morphs grief into something different, maybe something more familiar we somehow learn to accept as a constant presence.  Understand however that familiar does not equate to comfortable. That grief is like a nasty tasting food that life shoves down your throat all day, every day. Then over time, the abhorrent taste turns to mere rancor, then ultimately there is the non combative resignation to the presence of this unpleasant, undesirable thing in life. It's there, I can't change it, I don't like it, yet there is nothing I can do to remove myself from it.

Time brings that subtle change to our being that ultimately forces us to incorporate and assimilate this horrid thing into life, our life, our living. 

Time, it's not such a good healer...really time is no healer at all.  It's just taught me how to live with my hunchback.
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