Closure not going to come

— -- Closure.

That's the word that came up early and often during Tony Stewart's Monday morning news conference at Stewart-Haas Racing. When will Stewart find closure? When will Kevin Ward Jr.'s family find closure? What does Stewart think he might be able to do to help the Ward family find closure?

But here's the lone, hard truth that we have known since the very first hours after Ward's death via contact with Stewart's sprint car the night of Aug. 9 in upstate New York.

Closure isn't coming.

Closure didn't come with Ward's funeral. Closure didn't come when Stewart returned to the racetrack on Aug. 31. Closure didn't come Wednesday when a grand jury no-billed the case. Closure certainly hasn't come via the best efforts of the shouting masses on cable news channels, radio call-in shows and social media timelines. And closure didn't come Monday, when Stewart fielded questions with measured thoughtfulness and dark circles under his eyes, his voice wavering and his face managing one solitary half-smile.

Nothing he said Monday was as powerful or true as what he confessed while reading a prewritten statement at Atlanta one month ago and repeated in both his reaction to the grand jury ruling and his interview with the Associated Press immediately following.

"This is something that will definitely affect my life forever."

Anyone who has experienced the death of a loved one -- and we all will -- knows too well that the pain of that loss never goes away. The same goes for any tragic experience. The hurt erodes as the years go by, but you never truly get over it. You merely learn to live with it.

In the case of the Ward family, they are likely entering that confusing stage of grief where the physical sting begins to diminish, even if just slightly, from what it was seven weeks ago. That reality can hurt even worse than the initial loss because it means that life is threatening to go on without their beloved.

You get the sense that Stewart is also wrestling with those feelings. It's what he tried to explain Monday as he talked about the people who have come to him to share their tragic experiences, to tell him that he'll be scarred but he will survive this. As he said it, it wasn't with the look a man seeking relief.

"I do believe, as time goes on, it will be different every day," he said. "I don't know if it will ever get back to normal. But it will get better."

Better, yes. Normal, sort of. The definition of normal has changed. It now comes with a new set of properties. Why? Because Kevin Ward Jr. may be dead, but he will never go away. The accident at Canandaigua Motorsports Park is no longer played on a loop 24/7 on cable news, but it still plays on a loop in Stewart's mind. And it will be played every time he achieves another career milestone, championship celebrations forever parenthesized by tragedy. Stewart knows this.

Stewart has never been a big fan of stick-and-ball sports, so perhaps he doesn't know the story of Woody Hayes, but that's who he is now. He's racing's Woody Hayes.

Hayes is one of the greatest coaches in college football history. He won 205 games and five national championships at Ohio State. His look was so signature that even now, a quarter century after his death, fans attend Buckeyes games in Hayes costumes.

But no biography of the Hall of Fame coach is ever written or produced without showing the saddest moment of his career, when his emotions got the best of him during an intense 1978 Gator Bowl battle with Clemson. When a Tigers defender intercepted a pass and was tackled on the Ohio State sideline, Hayes punched the kid in the throat. The living legend was fired the next morning.

Almost four decades later, that's the first video clip that comes up if you Google "Woody Hayes."

What Hayes did was on purpose. What Stewart did was an accident. But the moment will always be the asterisk to the man.

Stewart has won championships across multiple national series, including three NASCAR Sprint Cup titles. He is the last of his kind, a crossover track-hopping dirt dauber, covered in the same mud and oil as A.J. Foyt and Mario Andretti. When he finally decides to retire from racing, Stewart will be enshrined in every auto racing hall of fame that has ever been founded.

When those enshrinements take place, we already know what questions the media and fans will have for Stewart, no matter how old he may be.

They will ask him to choose his greatest racing moment. They will ask him about his "my way" approach to life and racing. And then they will ask him about Kevin Ward Jr.

That might not be particularly fair. But that's just the way it is.

The closure isn't coming, no matter how badly it's desired.