Time heals all wounds
does it?
I went out for a walk a few days ago to a garden near my house and saw these cute sisters, around the age of 10 or 12, playing with each other and so full of life. The next day, I woke up and my mother told me that their mother had died that night.
The little girls who had so much life and joy ahead of them now had to live without a mother. They have to go on with their lives acting as though this hasn’t scarred them for life. They have to go back to school next Monday acting like last Tuesday didn’t change everything. Which made me question: does time heal all wounds?
Time may indeed heal wounds, but nothing can erase what has once been scarred. Time will, however, teach you how to cover the scar so beautifully that you might forget it’s there, but it’s there.
It always will be.
When I turned 13, my mom was diagnosed with cancer a few days before my birthday. For many, it was a bad memory. For me, it was a scar that I will never be able to cover, even if I tried my entire life. Which is why I will never be a preacher of “time heals all wounds,” but I will always believe in the people who help you forget that pain for a little while.
No antidepressant can do what people who genuinely love you can do for you. My biggest takeaway from life is the fact that Allah created Eve for Adam because He knew how much he needed her, and how much we need each other. No matter how independent you are, at the end of the day, you are human, and as humans, we need one another. God is the only being who needs nothing, but we do. That is why He created us for one another.
I know I would not be an inch of who I am if it were not for my sister. She dragged me out of a rut when I couldn’t even reach myself. She changed me completely. Growing up, we were never very close, but after my mom’s treatment, we learned to rely on each other because we knew that some of the greatest comfort we would find in this world would be in each other.
I know the little girls who recently lost their mother will learn this in the near future too.
Even if you are the most independent person in the world, there will come a point when you are vulnerable and need someone. Living in a society where talking about mental health is still a foreign concept, know that Allah gave mankind the knowledge of psychology so that we may help each other, because He knew how lonely life can get. So please, reach out to the help that God has made available to you.
When I learned of my mother’s diagnosis, I told none of my friends what I was going through because I didn’t want them to treat me differently. I was always someone who acted tough and broke in front of no one. When the time felt right, I started talking to my sister about how it had affected me, and slowly I felt a weight lift off my heart, knowing I had carried it alone for so long.
No wound can begin to heal if you don’t clean it and apply medicine. Learn to let it out. Find your people and talk to them about how you felt, or how you are feeling.
No one understands grief, and no one ever truly will. It is one emotion you can never prepare yourself for. Until you have gone through it, you can never fully understand it. Grief finds its way into every breath you take. You never truly learn to live without it; it becomes your companion in life. There is no easy way to say it.
If you are going through grief right now, understand that to love is to let go.
It might sound corny, or like something that has already been said a thousand times before, but life is a series of letting go. In Urdu, there is a saying: “جاتے کو کوئی نہیں روک سکتا” (Jaate ko koi nahi rok sakta), which means that you cannot stop what is already destined to leave.
What never leaves are the memories of those who have left.
Memories are where the dead remain alive. Remember them with your eyes closed when you cannot with your eyes open. You cannot change what has already happened, but you can change how you move forward from it.
Learn to live on behalf of the ones who no longer can.
You are yet to meet all the people you are going to tell stories about the ones you have lost to. Keep the lost ones alive through the stories they lived. My mother lost her father years ago, and I love listening to her tell stories about his life because it makes me feel like I know him, even though I do not remember him at all. And I know she loves talking about him because, for a few moments, she gets to relive all that she had with him.
“Allah has mysterious ways” is something a friend of mine always says. We human beings are so unaware; we have no idea how our lives can change in a single second. God has the most perfect plan, and He knows what we need. We do not.
My mom’s diagnosis brought me so much closer to my family, and I thank Allah for it every day. For better or worse, I became a different person. After that, the only thing that truly mattered to me was my family. I learned to understand them, love them, listen to them, and find comfort in them. God knew I needed them, so perhaps this was His way of giving them to me.
God knows what our human minds cannot even begin to comprehend, so instead of questioning everything, sometimes we have to let it be.
Maybe there is a way that time heals all wounds,
but only at the cost of learning how to live with them.
🥺