No Cure

i finally finished the book i was reading {Elizabeth Edwards "Saving Graces"}. as i was picking out quotes to include in a future blog post about the book, i came across one that sums up everything so perfectly. in this passage she writes to a fellow bereaved parent about a recent experience...

Someone else writes me to ask why I am not getting professional help in my “recovery.” He views mourning as a goal-directed task: rally the troops, make a list, get it done! That has so little to do with the way I feel, and I cannot find words to make him understand. How can I tell him there is no cure for me? I cannot express how deeply this boy had grown into my being, and how I will suffer his loss every day that I breathe. I cannot be cured of it, any more than I can be cured of breathing itself. I suppose there will come that day when I will need to clean the dining room, when I must box the pictures, when I will decide what is to become of the things in his closet, when I will not be able to visit his grave each day. But we simply eat in the kitchen, and I do not walk into his room, and I make time for the cemetery and Wade, because it is important to me that he have some time in each day that belongs just to him. And if I started putting him away and blocking him out of my day, would I be recovering from his death? Well, the problem is that it also seems awfully like ignoring his life. The image I have for our family is grapevines, twisting around each other, interweaving, leaves pushing through until it is impossible to separate the vines without destroying much of their beauty. And this vine was, without warning, ripped from us and from among us. We heal only by growing around the wound, in constant recognition of its absence.

there is no cure for losing a child. there is no recovering from the void that their absence carves out in our lives. but we fight like hell daily to heal by growing around the wound without forgetting that it's there.