As time runs its quiet course, we may look back on those we loved and respected and realise, too late, that there was always more we might have said before they were gone. Words left unspoken, gestures postponed, gratitude assumed rather than expressed. Affection we felt but rarely voiced. We might have thanked them, sincerely, and without pride. Told them, one last time, how much we loved them, how deeply we valued their presence in our lives, how fiercely their absence would be felt. We might have left no shadow of doubt.

They deserved that certainty. To know, as they faced the gathering dark, that their lives had meaning beyond themselves. That their lives had touched others in ways they perhaps never fully knew. Such knowledge might have brought a quiet comfort, a softening of the fear that comes when the light begins to fail. For it is a lonely thing to meet death believing that those once closest to you have ceased to care – or worse, that they never truly did. And as the final moments pass, there is no longer time to know the difference.

The dead will not see our tears, nor hear our whispered regrets carried too late on the wind. Whatever love we hold, it is to the living that we must give it voice. For the hour grows late, and the sands of time slip quietly away.