It is often said that "time
heals all wounds." Who first said it, I do not know, but I do know that it
is simply not true; there are wounds that even time cannot heal. I've said this
before, but it bears repeating. Again, and again, and again. We so often want
our wounds to heal completely, to leave behind no scar or reminder, but we
forget that the Lord Jesus continued to bear his wounds even after his
Resurrection.
J.R.R. Tolkien understood this well.
He suffered many losses throughout his life and knew what it means to bear
wounds, to be a member of the walking wounded. This is, I think, why we find
this exchange toward the end of The Return of the King in the chapter
titled, "The Grey Havens":
One
evening Sam came into the study and found his master looking very strange. He
was very pale and his eyes seemed to see things far away.
'What's
the matter, Mr. Frodo?' said Sam.
'I am
wounded,' he answered, 'wounded; it will never really heal.'
But then
he got up, and the turn seemed to pass, and he was quite himself the next day.
It was not until afterwards that Sam recalled that the date was October the
sixth. Two years before on that day it was dark in the dell under Weathertop.
The frustration, if I may use such a
word, in being a member of the walking wounded is that you can never be certain
when the wound will make itself felt, when someone will find you looking very
strange and seeming to see things far away. Days and weeks and months can pass
without feeling the wound too greatly (though rarely does a day pass without it
being felt some), but then, suddenly and without warning, it is felt with great
force against which there is no defense. Some days, however, you can count on
the wound being felt.
Today is one such day, being the
twenty-seventh anniversary of the death of my mother.
Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, whose studies
on the psychology of dying and death have been of great help to many, wrote
wisely:
The
reality is that you will grieve forever. You will not ‘get over’ the loss of a
loved one; you will learn to live with it. You will heal and you will rebuild
yourself around the loss you have suffered. You will be whole again but you
will never be the same. Nor should you be the same nor would you want to.
Time has not healed the wound of the
death of my mother - nor of the death of my father, the twenty-ninth anniversary
of which will be next month - but time has made the wound easier to bear.
Grief, at least for those with a melancholic disposition, becomes something of
a friend in which the walking wounded can find comfort; if there was no love,
there would be no grief. As Saint Bonaventure wrote, "Nothing is lost with
great sorrow that is not possessed with great love."
Speaking today to the young people
in the Philippines, His Holiness Pope Francis said to them, "Certain
realities of life we only see through eyes cleansed by our tears." The
walking wounded know the truth of these words and find in their tears a great
comfort, for, as Gene Thornton Wilder wrote, "In love's service, only wounded
soldiers can serve."
Eternal rest grant unto her, O Lord,
and let perpetual light shine upon her!
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