waiting.
Waiting to heal.
This lasted several years.
I had mistakenly assumed that healed meant restored .
As though scratched by a thorn on my arm, I was waiting for my flesh to seal itself so completely that eventually there would be no trace and I would forget which arm had been scratched.
It is a terrible thing to wait for something you desperately need that will never come.
I wish somebody had taken me out to the Greek diner on Bleecker Street and ordered for me: Boston cream pie and coffee—just coffee, not cappuccino, not latte. And I wish this person had then simply told me the truth.
Which is terrible but immeasurably less terrible than living suspended inside a misconception for years and years.
I can’t give you Boston cream pie or coffee and I’m sorry.
But at least I can tell you the truth about healing. Not the nice, inspiring truth. The real one that almost makes your bones groan to hear, even as you are in some strange way relieved.
Heal is a television word.
It’s satisfying to see somebody who has gone through adversity and come out the other side, healed.
That’s almost word for word, how they might introduce a segment on healing on a talk show. “Come out the other side.” Like a tunnel.
But here’s the thing: there are some things in life from which you do not heal.
The tunnel never ends. There is no other side of it.
If your child dies? You will never heal.
What will happen is, for the first few days, the people around you will touch your shoulder and this will startle you and remind you to breathe. You will feel as though you will soon be dead from natural causes; the weight of the grief will be physicaland very nearly unbearable. The loss of your child will feel and appear to be something fatal.
Eventually, you will shower and leave the house.
Maybe in a year you will see a movie.
One day somebody will say something and it will cause you to laugh.
You will clamp your hand over your mouth because you laughed and that laugh will break your heart, it will feel like a betrayal.
How can you laugh when your son is dead?
How can you laugh when your daughter is still missing?
In time—perhaps another year, maybe ten—you might have another child.
I’m just saying. You might.
To your friends, you will appear to have recovered from your loss. You started over and you have a new family.
What they won’t know, however, is that the old family never left the dinner table. All that really happened, you’ll think, is that the hole in the center of your life has narrowed just enough to be concealed by a laugh or new son or daughter.
Yet, you might feel a pressure for it to be true. You might feel that “enough” time has passed now, that the hole at the center of you should not be there at all.
You may even feel that by still loving, so much, the dead, you now betray the living.
Maybe there was a lesson you were supposed to learn and, obviously, have not. Maybe this new child will be taken, too.
The pressure to heal can cause enduring damage.
But like losing an arm or a leg in a car accident, no matter what, that arm or leg will never grow back.
II
Parents who have lost a child should be told that they will never heal from their loss. They will always have a terrible, wide hole within them. And other holes, smaller ones.
The way the dead daughter used to smell like apples in the summer? That’s a hole.
How the dead boy snorted when he laughed really hard. Another hole.
One hole surrounded by nearly an entire constellation of others.
So no, if your child dies, you will not heal.
Do not wait for the healing to arrive. It will never come. The holes will never leave or be filled with anything at all.
But holes are interesting things.
III
As it happens, we human beings are able to live just fine with many holes of many sizes and shapes.
And pleasure, love, compassion, fulfillment—these things do not leak out of holes of any size.
So we can be filled with
Waiting to heal.
This lasted several years.
I had mistakenly assumed that healed meant restored .
As though scratched by a thorn on my arm, I was waiting for my flesh to seal itself so completely that eventually there would be no trace and I would forget which arm had been scratched.
It is a terrible thing to wait for something you desperately need that will never come.
I wish somebody had taken me out to the Greek diner on Bleecker Street and ordered for me: Boston cream pie and coffee—just coffee, not cappuccino, not latte. And I wish this person had then simply told me the truth.
Which is terrible but immeasurably less terrible than living suspended inside a misconception for years and years.
I can’t give you Boston cream pie or coffee and I’m sorry.
But at least I can tell you the truth about healing. Not the nice, inspiring truth. The real one that almost makes your bones groan to hear, even as you are in some strange way relieved.
Heal is a television word.
It’s satisfying to see somebody who has gone through adversity and come out the other side, healed.
That’s almost word for word, how they might introduce a segment on healing on a talk show. “Come out the other side.” Like a tunnel.
But here’s the thing: there are some things in life from which you do not heal.
The tunnel never ends. There is no other side of it.
If your child dies? You will never heal.
What will happen is, for the first few days, the people around you will touch your shoulder and this will startle you and remind you to breathe. You will feel as though you will soon be dead from natural causes; the weight of the grief will be physicaland very nearly unbearable. The loss of your child will feel and appear to be something fatal.
Eventually, you will shower and leave the house.
Maybe in a year you will see a movie.
One day somebody will say something and it will cause you to laugh.
You will clamp your hand over your mouth because you laughed and that laugh will break your heart, it will feel like a betrayal.
How can you laugh when your son is dead?
How can you laugh when your daughter is still missing?
In time—perhaps another year, maybe ten—you might have another child.
I’m just saying. You might.
To your friends, you will appear to have recovered from your loss. You started over and you have a new family.
What they won’t know, however, is that the old family never left the dinner table. All that really happened, you’ll think, is that the hole in the center of your life has narrowed just enough to be concealed by a laugh or new son or daughter.
Yet, you might feel a pressure for it to be true. You might feel that “enough” time has passed now, that the hole at the center of you should not be there at all.
You may even feel that by still loving, so much, the dead, you now betray the living.
Maybe there was a lesson you were supposed to learn and, obviously, have not. Maybe this new child will be taken, too.
The pressure to heal can cause enduring damage.
But like losing an arm or a leg in a car accident, no matter what, that arm or leg will never grow back.
II
Parents who have lost a child should be told that they will never heal from their loss. They will always have a terrible, wide hole within them. And other holes, smaller ones.
The way the dead daughter used to smell like apples in the summer? That’s a hole.
How the dead boy snorted when he laughed really hard. Another hole.
One hole surrounded by nearly an entire constellation of others.
So no, if your child dies, you will not heal.
Do not wait for the healing to arrive. It will never come. The holes will never leave or be filled with anything at all.
But holes are interesting things.
III
As it happens, we human beings are able to live just fine with many holes of many sizes and shapes.
And pleasure, love, compassion, fulfillment—these things do not leak out of holes of any size.
So we can be filled with
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