when the rain fell on me

They say time heals all wounds, but I’m starting to think it just teaches us how to live with the pain.

I remember many years ago, I tried comforting a friend who had just lost her father. I told her to take it easy on herself, that the pain she was feeling would eventually pass. I meant well. I told her that nothing lasts forever not even sorrow. I said healing would come, with time.

But she looked at me and said, “You haven’t worn these shoes. You don’t know how it feels to lose someone you love not just temporarily, but forever.”

Back then, I didn’t fully understand what she meant. I thought I did. I thought words were enough. But now, I know better. Because death came for someone I loved, too. Like sudden rain falling from a clear sky, it struck without warning and it drenched my world.

Now I understand her silence. Her tears. Her anger.

The loneliness. The gap no one else can fill.

As time goes on, we’re forced to let go of little things: the sound of their laughter, the rhythm of their footsteps, the way they called our name. And yes it hurts. Deeply. But somehow, life pushes us forward. We are told to move on, to be strong. But moving on is scary. Doing everything alone is exhausting. There’s no one to ask for advice, no one to scold us when we mess up. The spirit we once leaned on is gone.

Sometimes, I find myself wanting to share everything with him all the milestones, the failures, the small victories. But he is no longer here to listen. Not to be heard, not to be seen, not to be touched.

All that’s left now are memories. And even those begin to fade. So we hold on tightly to the little that remains scraps of love and fragments of time tucked deep in our hearts.

I often think of that friend. The one who said I didn’t understand. She vanished too not to death, but to distance. No calls, no messages, no goodbyes. I still make quiet wishes every summer, every Christmas, even when stars pass overhead that I’ll meet her again on some ordinary street.

I want to tell her, “Now I understand. I finally know what it feels like.” I want us to cry together, to mourn together, to breathe life into the memories we lost.

But maybe that meeting will never happen. Maybe she’s gone forever too, just in a different way.

And so, I’ve learned that grief comes in many forms. Some people leave through death. Others leave through silence. And the ache they leave behind doesn’t always go away. Sometimes, it just softens into a quiet echo we carry around forever.

That’s life.

Simple, cruel, beautiful, and fleeting.

But we live. Somehow, we keep living.