Recoveries: physical and emotional

I am glad to report that my father's hip replacement surgery was successful.  He is still in the hospital and is scheduled to be released to a rehabilitation facility tomorrow.  (I say "is scheduled" because I've learned that nothing in this process is for certain.)

I've always felt that his fall, which resulted in a broken hip and months of intense physical pain, was intertwined with my mother's death.  Not that he couldn't or wouldn't have fallen if she were still alive.  But his fall meant that his physical state mirrored his emotional state.  My hope and prayer is that the surgery is beginning of his physical, as well as emotional, recovery.

I don't mean to suggest that he will ever be the same.  There's a saying: "time heals all wounds." Like all cliches, it's at once true and false.  Some wounds do heal.  You cut your finger, you break a bone, it hurts a lot, then it heals.  You recover, usually back to your pre-wound state.  Your girlfriend leaves you, it hurts, you're despondent, but then you find someone else and the pain recedes, and, usually, dissolves.  When your parent or spouse, or God-forbid, child dies, it will always hurt.  There is no healing.  No life event can eliminate the pain.  The sting of the loss will fade.  I'm getting used to living without my mother.  I'm not wallowing in pain.  Nor, however, am I trying to minimize it.  Her absence will always leave a deep hole in my, and my father's, being.