Time Heals All Wounds

by Ashley

This week, seniors were given the chance to get their photo taken in their caps and gowns decorated by their hard-earned honors medals and specialty ropes, by the local photographer Trisha Smathers, to make up for the photo they would have received on graduation. This then became the last time seniors would get to walk the halls of Athen High School as a student.

This bittersweet moment struck home for many seniors as the reality set in that they would no longer get to come back to the place where they have spent their last four years. Although it may have felt that at some times these right of passage celebrations were being taken away, time kept moving forward.

It should be a time of celebration, but graduation caps and gowns will continue to hang in closets without graduation to be worn to. Seniors will be moving on to the next stage in their life and with that, they are forced to close the chapter of high school behind them, but they are having to close the chapter faster than anyone could have expected. Forced to come to terms with the fate of their senior year, time stands still for no one. The year moves forward and with it, closer to an end without a proper goodbye.

Time moves on, but for the seniors, it is hard to move on when everything they have ever looked forward to for the past four years was taken away in roughly two weeks. Normal life as everyone knew it, and the things we took for granted, changed drastically overnight. With no clear answer to when life will be back to normal, it seems hard to move on from leaving high school without proper graduation. They say that time heals all wounds and maybe with time, this will heal too.