The pain of loss. Part 3 of ∞.

Time might seem like it heals all wounds but I tend to think that is an incorrect way of addressing what might actually be happening. Time increases experience, good, bad and otherwise. It fosters change. It separates us from each life event and leads us to each new one, aware of where we've been and blind to what is next. Perhaps some of the pain we experience in loss is the despair of uncertainty about the life we will lead in that person's absence. We have not yet built a positive notion of what life can be without them, having not yet experienced it, and we fail to see the new, unknowable potential with sufficient hope. My mother is now given to eternity, the story of her life closed to this finite journey's view. Her legacy will continue to evolve as it reaches throughout the lives of her children and friends but her changing influence is now gone. I recognize that she is gone and the pain of her absence is still very real and present. And even though time will change things eventually it has not quite enlightened my experience thus far. And that's okay.