Mending is an act of love. Spending time to repair broken items gives them value and creates a caring bond between the item and mender. Being on the mend is to be in a state of healing.
“One night, you learn that in Ancient Greek τραῦμα (traûma) simply means wound, and you cannot help but laugh. You’d spent countless hours reading theorists on pain and suffering—Freud, Lacan, Sontag, Bataille, Foucault, Girard, Scarry—and the revelation of your obsession had been waiting for you all along in the dictionary. A simple equation: Trauma = wound. Wound = trauma.”
