I think one of the biggest tragedies of being human is that we don’t immediately recognize the value of a thing or a person until they’re no longer there.
Some of us are stubborn, reluctant to reach first because we don’t want to seem too eager. Some of us convince ourselves there will always be tomorrow, and if there isn’t enough time today, we’ll simply make more later. We move through life believing there will be another conversation, another embrace, another ordinary Tuesday that feels too insignificant to savor.
As aware as we try to be, time has a way of slipping quietly through our hands. The clock stops for no one, even while we’re busy believing it will wait just a little longer. We promise ourselves we won’t take people for granted, and most of us truly mean it. But taking something for granted rarely announces itself. It settles into routine, disguises itself as certainty, and convinces us that what we have today will still be there tomorrow.
Until it isn’t.
Until we no longer feel the warmth of their breathing against our skin.
Until we no longer hear our name resting on their lips.
Until our phone forgets their ringtone.
Until their side of the bed stays untouched.
Until their laugh exists only in memory, and we strain to remember its exact sound.
Until we reread old messages just to hear their voice in our minds one more time.
Until we catch ourselves reaching for them before remembering there’s no one there to hold.
Until the ordinary moments we once rushed through become the ones we’d give anything to live again.
Maybe that’s the saddest part of being human — the realization that love is often easiest to measure in its absence. We rarely realize we’re standing inside “the good old days” until they’ve already become memories. And by the time we understand the true weight of what we held, our hands are empty.
So perhaps the closest thing we have to defeating that tragedy is this: linger a little longer, say the words before they’re eulogies, hold people as though time has always been telling the truth. Because one day, all that’s left of someone may be the space they occupied…and the unbearable realization that they were extraordinary all along.