The phrase "a while to forget" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used when discussing the time it takes to move on from a memory or experience.
Example: "After the breakup, it took me a while to forget the good times we had together."
Alternatives: "some time to forget" or "a long time to forget".
But he's bounced back from bigger blows than this, even if that 79 is going to take a while to forget.
As someone who cycles mainly to commute, it took me a while to forget that I didn't have to be anywhere by a particular time.
It takes a while to forget Mr. Broderick's Eugene, but once one does, it's clear that his successor has captured both the "nice, likable, funny" shell of the young man and the "angry, hostile" writer-on-the-make within.
With clunky boots, and an old upright tyre and a welly in a bucket for goalposts, a group of boys gather in the afternoon to have a match and are able, just for a while, to forget.
As a spectator it's worryingly easy, after a while, to forget that this is not a real dinosaur; for the participants wielding cutting and measuring instruments down on the soundstage it seems to have been a genuinely exciting new way of studying their specialist subject from all angles.
Greece today is like a new girlfriend: It takes a while to forget the old one, but once you do, life is better".
The BBC seemed for a little while to forget that it uses two different currencies – every real purchasing pound is also a public pound that has political consequences – and that it is far more under scrutiny than almost any other organisation.
At times, he becomes so deeply engrossed in his exegesis that the story--and its subject--seem for a while to have been forgotten.
Milton Berle once summed it up for many of us: "I have a photographic memory, but once in a while I forget to take off the lens cap".
Then, Hosh Jasmin is a place to forget – for a while at least – all of the area's troubles.
