Deconstructing the saying "time heals"

Recently, I realized that losing my only sibling, David, in 1983, has some similarities to losing a spouse. As a kid, my brother was my person. The two of us shared the same home, the same parents. We went on the same family vacations; we weathered our parents’ divorce together. When David died, I thought time would stop. It was incredulous to me that the sun could continue to rise and set each day without him in the world.

The age old, ubiquitous expression, “Time heals,” is at best a partial truth, more likely a myth. Time doesn’t heal so much as it continues. The sun continued to rise and set each day without David in the world. Those days turned to weeks, months, years. 

That the world cannot possibly go on is disproved. Perhaps the, “Time heals” myth is where the erroneous notion of, “Getting over it,” (the grief or loss) comes from. A point in time when we are over the death of a loved one is quite simply a false, albeit common, notion. Grief comes at the loss of a person you loved. You don’t get over your love for someone who is still alive, so why would you get over your love for someone who has died?

For 38 years the sun has continued to rise and set each day and I can tell you that I have never gotten over my love or loss of David and I won’t. I have learned to carry that love and loss with me.

Losing David at an early age and my mother some years later were some of the reasons I fell in love with Bob. As a palliative care and hospice physician, he had helped families who were losing their loved ones. He would always say, “I have seen death thousands of times, it is peaceful. The patient is going to be fine, it’s the family I worry about because they have to go on after the death.” Guidance such as “Precious Time,” and “Hope and Prepare” that I wrote about in The Hospice Doctor’s Widow: a Journal, are as much or more for the survivors as the patients.

If we are lucky enough to love someone, the grief and sadness when we lose them is unavoidable and a testament to that love.