Tears Dry on Their Own

How loss, love, and time quietly teach us what youth never could

There is a particular arrogance that comes with being healthy.
I recognise it now because I once lived inside it.

When the body works, we assume it always will. We walk fast, plan long, complain about small inconveniences, and behave like life has quietly promised us permanence. As if we are here forever.

The world may crack and crumble around us, but we are upright, mobile, and therefore convinced we are exempt.

Nothing happens to us.
Those things happen to others.

I learned much later that this belief doesn’t come from confidence. It comes from ignorance. The good kind. The kind that youth generously provides.

Especially during happy times.

Happiness has a way of numbing our awareness. When things are going well, troubles politely stay offstage. Birthdays, routines, shared meals, ordinary laughter. These moments trick us into believing life has no sharp turns. We immerse ourselves so fully that fragility feels like a rumour.

Then one day, an active person doesn’t get out of bed.

Not because they don’t want to.
Because the body has quietly changed its mind.

I didn’t have the language for this when I was young. I only knew that something had shifted. That rooms felt heavier. That conversations became hushed. That adults started speaking in careful sentences, as if words themselves might cause damage.

People often say we should visit hospitals or orphanages to stay grounded. To be reminded of reality. But I’ve come to believe that life does its own grounding, without invitations or warnings.

Happiness and sadness are not opposites. They are collaborators.

Happiness knows it has meaning only because sadness exists. Without sorrow, joy would be unremarkable. Like it’s just another habit. And sadness depends on happiness to be understood. Without knowing joy, grief would have no edges.

Life’s strange charm lies in its balancing act.

I sometimes think about my mother. About what she could not have imagined.

She could not have imagined dying young. No active person ever does. She could not have imagined leaving behind a son who was still learning how the world works, still figuring out which questions to ask and which fears to ignore. And she could not have imagined leaving behind a husband she had fallen in love with unexpectedly, far away from home, far away from familiarity.

And what she certainly could not have imagined was what came after.

That her loving husband would one day tell her that he wished to marry again. Not because love had diminished. But because life, relentless and oddly proportioned, had placed another wounded soul in his path.

A woman he met at the hospital.

A woman who had lost everything. Her husband. Her entire family. Three small sons, taken by a river during what should have been an ordinary swim.

Life does not distribute grief evenly. It clusters it. Lets loss recognise loss in quiet corridors. Lets broken people find each other. Not to replace what was lost, but to survive what remains.

When an active person becomes bedridden.
When a mother dies too early.
When love finds its way back through devastation.

These are not exceptions. They are reminders.

I was too young then to understand what life was teaching me.
Decades later, I know this much: we grow up believing life is stable. We grow wiser when we realise it never was. And learn to love it anyway.

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Author’s Note

This story looks back at an early loss from the vantage point of time. It reflects on how life disrupts our assumptions quietly and without warning, and how grief, love, and memory continue to shape us long after the moment has passed.