Death.

It's a word we all have a hard time taking in.

It's the word that means the end of life — a word that elicits a feeling almost too hard to describe. You'll feel like an invisible hand has just shoved you into a deep pool of your own tears as you choke on that saltiness that's always on your lips, filling your small lung capacity until you feel the unclear darkness take you in fettered hands and drown you in sadness. Just plain, old sadness.

You least expect it to take that loved one away from you. Death is too quiet for you to notice anything as it picks its next fated victim and waits at their side, hovering over them until the time comes when another breath is to be the last.

Perhaps you never got to say that last goodbye to that person. You left the house thinking it was going to be just another day, kicking the dust up around you in boredom, but come back home finding death at your threshold. Then after countless days of this heaviness that follows you around, you still feel that same feeling you felt as you received that bad news. You still walk around as if you are a lost soul who didn't get the chance to move on to whatever afterlife you were promised.

After years, you'll still feel the memories of that moment to come and haunt you. You'll hear of other's bouts with such misery and you'll be reminded of those times in which you knew exactly how they felt. It's not like you had a choice on how to feel and when to feel — when something or someone triggers that painful memory, it's like your tears want to drown you again.

Your throat feels tight and when you try to talk, your voice is strained, hurt. It's raw and the emotion comes off of it in rolling waves that almost no one could miss. Your face heats up, and you feel the tears start to prick at your eyes. No one really understands why you're feeling sad all of the sudden, but you quietly excuse yourself so that you can calm down.

It's been years, you tell yourself. Why do I still feel this way? Why can't I get over it already?

You can't change that part of you that lets loose that melancholy every single time you're reminded of that loved one's death. You can't really erase it from your mind either.

So you're just left to carry on that memory forever.

Perhaps more of that heaviness will be added onto your slumped shoulders.

Even if people tell you that it will be OK, you know it isn't going to be.

It won't ever be OK.

But you know what?

That's just what gives life its significance. It's what makes us cherish what little time we have left if we know that we only have a few months to live. It's what makes us care for someone so much more because we know that the time that we have between us is numbered by days.

Death comes with life. It's a package we can't separate no matter how much we want to.

Treasure life. Hold those you love for long periods of time and repeatedly tell them that you love them to the point that they hear your voice echoing in their heart for many days to come.

Please, please, please don't waste the time you have with them.