Time Heals All Things: Not So Much, Not Always

By Frosty Wooldridge

July 31, 2025

The adage goes, “Time heals all things/wounds.”

Let’s take a step back concerning that statement.

“The phrase “time heals all wounds/things“ suggests that time lessons pain over time. While it’s a common saying, it’s not always accurate, as some emotional wounds can linger or even worsen without active healing efforts. Time can dull the pain and provide perspective, but it doesn’t automatically resolve deep emotional wounds. True healing often requires conscious effort, self-reflection, and sometimes professional support,” says Psychology Today.

A week ago or so ago, the psychopath killer Bryan Kohberger, who slit the throats of those four college kids in Moscow, Idaho—found himself in a 8’ by 10’ by 12’ prison cell for the rest of his life. I sat listening to the “victims impact statements’ of the family members with tears streaming down my face the whole time.

He destroyed four lives in the spring of their years. He destroyed eight parents. He destroyed dozens of friends of those college kids. He destroyed the emotions of relatives, college instructors and worse—-he destroyed those four kids’ future husbands and wives, their kids, the jobs they would have worked, the travel, the joy of being alive.

Kohberger did a number on my emotions because I’ve lost friends and family members to early death. I’ll bet he did the same to you. The sheer senselessness and horror of his actions defy a sane person’s imagination. While he sits and rots in that jail cell for the next 50 years, his life grows more meaningless and vacant with every minute of every day. How did such a monster ever set foot on this planet?

Will time heal all wounds? From my perspective, not a chance. The pain he inflicted on those kids, their families, and even the nation will remain as a life-long “dagger” in everyone’s hearts.

But then, here in Denver, Colorado, I witnessed the slaughter of innocents at Columbine High School over 26 years ago. Those two walking “insane asylum” teenagers destroyed lives and families that reaches into today because “time heals all wounds” doesn’t really soothe anyone’s painful experiences of that day.

Then, you look at another Denver tragedy when a shooter walked into a movie theater to shoot 12 dead and injure 70 others. None of the living will ever recover from that horror.

And then, December 14, 2012, look back at the parents of those 20 kids and four adults at Sandy Hook Elementary who suffered death at the hands of a mentally sick kid with an automatic weapon. I would be interested in the long-term pain those victims’ parents and friends still suffer today.

Just this week, a nutcase drove from Las Vegas to New York City to kill four people in cold blood. It makes you sick to your stomach that so many “crazy people” walk around shooting up and destroying countless lives.

Over the 4th of July weekend in Chicago, 55 shootings with 6 dead, or maybe more after they didn’t survive surgery. It’s nuts!

Why does this bother me?

At my age of 17, my father died of a heart attack at his youthful age of 46. It devastated me. It changed my personality. It changed my life. It wrecked my sister and did a number on one of brothers. We were doing our lives with paper routes, school, baseball, basketball, and football. We played golf, tennis, bowling and canoeing. All of a sudden, I come home in April of 1964 with a whole bunch of cars in the front of our house. My Dad’s best friend took me aside, “Frosty, I’ve got bad news…your father died umping behind the plate at the Albany game…I’m so sorry.”

My world collapsed. My understanding of life disintegrated. My concept of myself in the world spun into tears, debilitating crying and horrific heartache. My brothers and sister cried all night. I hit the bunk totally numb. In the morning, I woke with my brain burning with pain. My body didn’t know what was happening. Thank my mother for her courage to keep moving forward.

At the funeral, they put him in a casket and I was forced to walk through to see him dead. I have never attended an open-casket funeral again. I would rather remember my friends and family alive in my mind rather than “dead” in a casket.

Back in 1964, no grief counselors. I staggered into each new day with a kind of “dread” that I cannot explain. Just a deep, painful kind of emotional poison that pervaded every cell in my body. I was sick, sad, hurt, and completely a victim of death visiting at my doorstep in my young life.

It still pains me when I visit my Dad’s gravesite at the Rose Lake Cemetery in LeRoy, Michigan. I just break down and cry my eyes out. My father was SUCH a good man, good father, good human being.

So, when I see all these killings in our society today, I KNOW that every family that suffers a loss of a mother, father, friend, sister, or brother—it’s horrible, sad and, guess what, “Time does not heal all wounds.”

What do I do to keep my life, mind and emotions in balance?

At first, I staggered through each day. I discovered that nobody else cares that your parent died. Everyone else faces their own challenges each day. Some fathers beat their kids. Other parents verbally degrade their kids. Some parents ignore their kids. In the inner city, you’ve got drug use, incest, alcohol, and the TV “parents” millions of kids. Today, the cell phone has become the new parent. We no longer see, “Father Knows Best” TV shows. Today, it’s “Love after Lockup.” Which is about the MOST sickening, stupid and ridiculous show on television! You’ve got to lower your IQ below 60 to watch it.

As time passed, I attended college. I booked seven days a week. I decided to make my Dad proud. I carried his picture in my wallet. I wrote letters to him. I wrote letters to my Mom. I made the Dean’s List often.

While “time” lets the pain subside, 61 years later, I still cry over my father’s early death. He didn’t get to see me become the man he was raising. He didn’t get to see me become a world explorer or an author of two dozen books. He didn’t get to meet my wife. I didn’t get to see him grow old with my mother.

And yet, I say “Hi” to his 8”X10” picture in my office each day. I surround his picture with my adventure pictures so he can enjoy me standing on the Wall of China, scuba diving the Galapagos Islands, working and living in Antarctica, riding my bicycle across six continents.

My father was an average man, yet he is a tower of excellence that gave me the courage to live a spectacular life.

For you, reading this commentary, I hope you have survived the loss of a parent or friend. I wish you to experience all the infinite joys and disappointments in life, and simply keep moving forward. Life takes courage. I wish you courage, forgiveness, happiness, health, joy, love and understanding.

© 2025 Frosty Wooldridge – All Rights Reserved

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