Time is inexorable. Neither our will nor our desire can thwart its forward movement. All moments, regardless as if they be good or ill, slip swiftly and irrevocably into ever more distant yesterdays.

It is July, the month of anniversary, when I must acknowledge once again that Olin's life passes still another year deeper into the mists of what has been.

Yet time's passage erases no detail of that final day, the ending hours of Olin's life. Those instances are mine forever, forming the nightmare anguish that entwined itself into the weakened tendrils of my bereaved spirit for several years.

Still, while time does not erase the past, it does offer an element of mercy, for it provides the space in which we can, if we wish, labor to heal.

For over three years I carried the burden of bereavement as a corrosive name in my soul. It scorched my present with futility, my yesterdays with mindless destruction.

Since those early years, anniversaries, birthdays, and other special times have created a much lighter load. However, the weight has not been totally obviated, nor do I feel it will ever be completely gone.

Like before, the anticipatory apprehension affects my approach to all these days. However, since 1986, July has grown yearly less effective in working its misery within me.

July 4th arrives just two days before the day of his death, and I always recall his invitation to ride in his car to see the fireworks with him. I also remember declining his invitation, unknowingly losing a final chance for just the two of us to be together. That memory hurts still and I take its annual arrival as a reminder of a love that cannot die.

But after bearing that pain again for just a while, I seize the hurt and cast it out, knowing there was once a time when I could not disengage, when I would repeatedly relive the moment until it became agony. Those were the seemingly endless years when I lacked any governance of my bereavement whatsoever. Today that is no longer true.

Those early years gave me the space I needed to work toward healing. The space was a gift of time, but the resolve to strive for healing was my gift to myself

Thus, this occasion of the ninth anniversary of Olin's death has been another milestone for both giving thanks and for the feeling the heaviness of a great sadness.

I give thanks for the time we had together. I give thanks for the space to struggle toward healing, that his living could clearly be seen as the greatest blessing of my life, a source of such joy that even death cannot diminish its glory. I give thanks for the opportunity afforded by the years to share Olin and my love for him with others. I give thanks for being granted the ability to give my own sorrow words, thus helping me immeasurably to achieve the healing I so desperately sought

And I feel deep sadness that in this life I'll not see, touch, hear, or hold him again. I feel sadness also as each passing anniversary buries the most loving period of my life even deeper into yesterday.

Olin was and is my son, my child, the only one I will ever know. I was and still am his Dad. Though the years mount ever onward and our lives together enter the long ago, I am confident that somehow we still touch, that love endures, and that we will, in some future tomorrow, meet to see, hear, and hold each other once again.

Don Hackett

Articles written by Don Hackett, such as the above, help to give us a better understanding of grief. His thoughts are what I strive to make our meetings project. As time goes on, your feeling of grief won't get better, but it will get a whole lot easier!

Shirley Cohen