Inspirations from Border Mountain

Examining the Ways that Loss is a Wound:

The surgeon makes a skillful cut across the man's chest, revealing layers of muscle tissue and bone. He performs an intricate cardiac operation, then carefully stitches the parts back together again.

The patient spends days and even weeks experiencing acute pain from the operation. Although he was an active mountain climber before the surgery, he puts off his next climb until the next year, knowing he'll need time for his body to heal and his heart to recover from the trauma of the surgery.

Even a year after the operation, when the scar has healed to a pink line and the doctors have given him a clean bill of health, the man continues to feel the reminders of his trauma. Occasionally, searing pain in the scar area lets him know that the damaged nerves have not yet recovered.

A loss can affect human emotions in much the same way the surgeon's knife impacts the body. Any kind of a loss creates an emotional wound. The bigger the loss, the more severe the wound will be. And, just as a physical wound takes months and sometimes years to heal, so healing from an emotional wound takes time.

Because emotional wounds leave no visible scars, our society is less tolerant of the need for healing time. Comments like, “It's been a month since her husband died and she's still holed up in the house. She's going to have to pull herself together,” are far too common. The impatience with which those who are grieving are sometimes treated only serves to increase their feeling of brokenness, isolation, and despair.

Someone once said, “Grief is not a problem to be solved, it is simply a statement that you have loved someone.” The pain of separation is love's price tag and those who have had the courage to love deeply in spite of the potential pain of loss deserve support through the difficult days of the healing process.