Fabric of Forever

When someone close to us dies,
the world stutters.
The light shifts.
And though clocks keep ticking,
nothing sounds the same.

Even if we saw it coming,
even if the breath was shallow,
and the days had grown slow,
when death arrives,
it crashes like thunder in a quiet room.

We are never ready.
Not really.

It is always too soon.
Even with time to prepare,
the final silence still stuns.
The absence is louder than any voice that ever filled the space.

It is the heaviest thing we are ever asked to carry,
not the loss itself,
but the continuation.
The rising the next day.
The folding of laundry.
The return to small talk
while our souls are still screaming.

And one of the hardest truths,
the one that hollows out the chest,
is that we want to see them again.

We want to hear their laugh in the kitchen.
Feel their hand on our shoulder.
See their eyes when we share good news.
We want to go back.
Or forward.
Or anywhere they are.

We whisper it in the dark:
I wasn’t ready.
I didn’t get to say enough.
Come back.

But here’s what I believe,
a quiet thought I’ve carried like a lantern
through long and sleepless nights:

What if time,
that quiet deceiver,
is but a veil drawn over eternity,
and behind it,
we were never truly apart?

What if, in the place where all things are as they should be,
we are not waiting
but already together,
laughing,
embracing,
full of the love we feared was lost?

What if, when they arrived,
you were there to greet them,
smiling, whole, radiant,
because there is no “before” or “after”
in the language of forever?

And what if, when your time comes,
they are also there,
arms open,
as though not a single moment has passed
since your last goodbye?

Perhaps there is no waiting at all.
Perhaps we are with them now,
not in steps or days,
but in the quiet light that lingers between parting.

In ways no clock can measure,
no grief can dim.

And maybe,
just maybe,
love does not vanish with breath,
but slips gently into the unseen,
woven into the fabric of forever.