A look at time as a healing value for grief.
When I was younger, my brother and I didn’t get along (to say the least). He would tease me as an older sibling is apt to do, and I would be just as annoying as any younger sibling could. My Nonni and I used to talk about this, and she would always tell me just to wait and that time would let us grow. This idea of the healing factor of time was a common denominator in a lot of my childhood, and in pop culture, ideas of time healing all wounds are very prevalent. The small scrapes and bruises from tripping and falling always seemed to be healed by time, so little me felt this naturally applied to everything, right? As I’ve aged, some wounds persist- the small wound from tripping off my grandparents’ steps healed, but deeper wounds that didn’t seem to want to heal stayed. My Nonni used to believe that time could heal all wounds, but how could time heal the wound from losing her?Â
 Losing my Nonni was something I never really considered until it happened. I always knew it would happen someday, but I never deeply considered the possibility of my life without her. My Nonni and I spoke about my future so much that the idea of her not seeing it felt impossible. I had grand assumptions of what it would be like to lose her, but I thought I would be older, stronger, and somehow ready. I didn’t think I would be wounded so deeply that it felt like a part of me had left with her. The quickness and pain of losing someone so thoroughly woven into the fabrics of my life didn’t just leave a small scrape; it felt like it ripped my self into pieces, leaving the rest of my being to inevitably unravel in her absence.
My Nonni believed that time could heal scrapes, repair relationships, and help people grow as individuals. This idea both comforted me and terrified me after losing her. I recognized that in many ways I had a gaping wound, and if I didn’t heal then, just as with real wounds, it would get worse. But what would healing look like? What was hurting me was that my Nonni was gone, I couldn’t get her back, so how could I heal? In many ways, I was scared of healing, too. The pain of grieving is hard, but it reminded me of her in a unique way. She couldn’t physically be with me, but the pain I felt made her a constant reminder, and so she still lived in my memory.
It took a while, but one day I realized that I wasn’t thinking of her all day. This, of course, led to me thinking of her more, but still, day by day, I found the impossible happening: I was healing. To me, healing is not forgetting about my Nonni, but processing my grief instead of letting it control me. That fear of forgetting her is still present, and in many ways it will never go away, but the love I have for her can never just be forgotten, as it is so integral to my being. My memory of her hasn’t disappeared as a small scrape would, but has become a scar that I wear proudly. In some ways, my grief is seen by everyone. I’ve incorporated my loved ones lost into my life so thoroughly that it would be impossible to explain every way. The necklace that my Nonni used to wear, the one I had never seen her without, now rests against my heart. I wear it with pride and never take it off, just as she would have wanted. This necklace is a physical representation of my love for my Nonni, something I keep so close to my heart and will never lose, but in some ways, it has also become a physical manifestation of the wound of losing her, a wound that, while time has greatly healed, will be with me forever.Â
So, back to the question, does time heal all wounds? Yes and no. My Nonni believed time could heal all, from small scrapes to my tumultuous relationship with my brother, not because time is doing anything, but because we are growing. I didn’t understand this when I was little; instead, I saw time as an entity to wonder after, but along the way, I learned that time really does nothing. It’s the little decisions taken during that time that lead to growth, that let all wounds heal; in this way, time and growth are directly connected. Just as it takes time for your body to heal a physical wound, it takes time for your mind to grow from an inner wound. So yes, time has healed my small scrapes, my emotional wounds, and time has granted me a friendship with my brother, but the little steps towards healing I took every day are what have made me a more evolved human, and I did that, not time.
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