A personal essay and poem by Megan Falley on grief intensifying over time, the myth that time heals all wounds, and finding Andrea Gibson through poetry.
I think time is part of it, but I think integrating a wound is also something we have to choose. Over and over again, if we tell the story, it’s woven into who we are. Sharing it helps make sense of it.
(Or at least, that’s how it’s been for me. Like Megan, I was widowed at 36. If it wasn’t for the friends I’ve made since, my “widow besties,” I don’t know where I would be.)
Time pushes a wound deep into our tissue. It churns and wiggles until it finds the most comfortable spot like my kitten does when she wants to fall asleep. There it lives forever, somedays filling us with light from within and on others pushing tears up until they overflow. Time makes a wound permanent and whole.
Time does nothing for grief. But steadily time makes my life bigger, or more complicated, or just *more* than just my grief. And so the container of me gets better at holding it without feeling like there's no space for anything else inside.
Time petrifies all wounds. Encapsulates. Preserves. Hardens. And makes, not beautiful, but something permanent. You can run your fingers over it and say, "Yes, here. This is where it hurt."
It depends on how fresh the wound is. My old wounds travel softly with me now. The remembering crests and brings tears at times but also a smile or a laugh. The fresh wounds are all consuming at times. My emotions churn around them twisting them in a myriad of ways trying desperately to make sense of it all. I wait for time to ever so gently wear away the gut wrenching freshness. Thank you Meg.
Absolutely a written/spoken wonder, as another reader commented. I just had to subscribe after reading this, and I am blown away by the truth and beauty in your words. Thank you for sharing them here. As for your Mad Libs (I loved Mad Libs as a kid, still do actually), what immediately popped into my brain after I read that is.....seals. What does time do to our wounds? Time seals them into our bodies: mind, heart, soul. It becomes permanently embedded in our beings, never to be sorted out or forgotten or incorporated. It's visible to us like a scar on our skin; we always feel it, and it doesn't fade to the point of being unnoticeable one day.
I imagine your plants with names, absorbing the quiet, gathered around you, supporting your fingers as they lift up and down on the keys. Thank you for another written/spoken wonder.
Time kills and saves us, sometimes both at the same time. Tricky, wily little bastard. It is a thief & also a giver. Time, what on earth is time? We have sliced it via the clock face and the calendar. Time doesn't care. As the saying goes: It marches on and also our words tell us: it beats to its own drummer. Time can feel like a motherfucker because it often is, and also like the most amazing icing on the most delicious delicacy as it often also is. Time gives us time to love, not to squander it, sometimes we remember that and get busy paying attention to things that matter, and other times, well, not so much.
I wish for more time for all of us marching towards our (alleged) ends. And for you dear Megan, tender achy Megan, beautiful word weaver, I hope you keep spinning your exquisite poetry for Andrea, those words will stand the test of time, remaining long after wherever we go, we go. Thank you from where I sit, looking at the rays of sun illuminate the impossible green of each leaf on the trees I see, a thousand different shades. Grateful for my time right now, right here.
Time forms scars on wounds Meg. That’s what my honey and me cooked up after listening and reading. Please keep writing-prose, poetry, madlibs, whatever comes out. We need you! Still sorry that Andrea slipped into another dimension.
Grief is not a static, unchanging emotion. It is not an emotion at all. Instead it is a container of all our emotions and moods. It is ever changing in intensity, still, never going away.
I think time *integrates* a wound--makes it become less an event that happened to us and more a part of us that becomes indistinguishable from us.
I think time is part of it, but I think integrating a wound is also something we have to choose. Over and over again, if we tell the story, it’s woven into who we are. Sharing it helps make sense of it.
(Or at least, that’s how it’s been for me. Like Megan, I was widowed at 36. If it wasn’t for the friends I’ve made since, my “widow besties,” I don’t know where I would be.)
Mmm that makes so much sense. And explains why people who don't make that choice and do that work can feel fractured.
So well said.
Is this your experience too?
Yes, it certainly is Ariana.
I agree, Ariana, and you expressed it so well! I think all wounds integrate like that.
beautiful.
Time opens, then holds open all wounds so the rest of us can come outside
Best fucking grief question ever Megan… “Why do we assume time magnifies absence for the living, but diminishes it for the dead?” 💥
Time deepens all wounds, in my experience of being a bereaved mother. Please keep writing to and for us, always.
Love to you, Mary ❤️🩹
Hugging you Mary.
Time pushes a wound deep into our tissue. It churns and wiggles until it finds the most comfortable spot like my kitten does when she wants to fall asleep. There it lives forever, somedays filling us with light from within and on others pushing tears up until they overflow. Time makes a wound permanent and whole.
Time does nothing for grief. But steadily time makes my life bigger, or more complicated, or just *more* than just my grief. And so the container of me gets better at holding it without feeling like there's no space for anything else inside.
Time is the wound.
The mystics say God is outside of time. That we are not separate from God…
yet in time we almost always feel the pain of separation.
The break in the always being the fleeting moments when the clouds part and the sun of a truer true shines balm on our face.
When we laugh while we cry, when we get the joke, when we thank God for a chance to play in time!
Time is the heartbreaking crucial sticky part of this blip of human life, the curse and the grace. Thank God this ends.
Time is the test. The mother, the surgeon, the teacher, the enemy.
Time is the whole point, and the worst part.
“Time is the whole point, and the worst part.” Whew.
“If we were vampires and death was a joke…” 🎶
I love that song!! My husbamd and I sing it when he plays it on guitar, we've arranged it as a duet...
Wow, that’s so beautiful!
Time petrifies all wounds. Encapsulates. Preserves. Hardens. And makes, not beautiful, but something permanent. You can run your fingers over it and say, "Yes, here. This is where it hurt."
It depends on how fresh the wound is. My old wounds travel softly with me now. The remembering crests and brings tears at times but also a smile or a laugh. The fresh wounds are all consuming at times. My emotions churn around them twisting them in a myriad of ways trying desperately to make sense of it all. I wait for time to ever so gently wear away the gut wrenching freshness. Thank you Meg.
Absolutely a written/spoken wonder, as another reader commented. I just had to subscribe after reading this, and I am blown away by the truth and beauty in your words. Thank you for sharing them here. As for your Mad Libs (I loved Mad Libs as a kid, still do actually), what immediately popped into my brain after I read that is.....seals. What does time do to our wounds? Time seals them into our bodies: mind, heart, soul. It becomes permanently embedded in our beings, never to be sorted out or forgotten or incorporated. It's visible to us like a scar on our skin; we always feel it, and it doesn't fade to the point of being unnoticeable one day.
Time seasons our wounds...
Liberally in most cases.
Gosh Meg,listening to this poem all I can hear is Andrea in your voice.In how you recite x So beautiful and thank you xx
This is gorgeous, Meg. Beautiful. Heartbreaking. Tender and true.
I imagine your plants with names, absorbing the quiet, gathered around you, supporting your fingers as they lift up and down on the keys. Thank you for another written/spoken wonder.
Time kills and saves us, sometimes both at the same time. Tricky, wily little bastard. It is a thief & also a giver. Time, what on earth is time? We have sliced it via the clock face and the calendar. Time doesn't care. As the saying goes: It marches on and also our words tell us: it beats to its own drummer. Time can feel like a motherfucker because it often is, and also like the most amazing icing on the most delicious delicacy as it often also is. Time gives us time to love, not to squander it, sometimes we remember that and get busy paying attention to things that matter, and other times, well, not so much.
I wish for more time for all of us marching towards our (alleged) ends. And for you dear Megan, tender achy Megan, beautiful word weaver, I hope you keep spinning your exquisite poetry for Andrea, those words will stand the test of time, remaining long after wherever we go, we go. Thank you from where I sit, looking at the rays of sun illuminate the impossible green of each leaf on the trees I see, a thousand different shades. Grateful for my time right now, right here.
Time forms scars on wounds Meg. That’s what my honey and me cooked up after listening and reading. Please keep writing-prose, poetry, madlibs, whatever comes out. We need you! Still sorry that Andrea slipped into another dimension.
Grief is not a static, unchanging emotion. It is not an emotion at all. Instead it is a container of all our emotions and moods. It is ever changing in intensity, still, never going away.
Time twists, smooths, tears, scrabs,
sculpts all wounds