I STILL REMEMBER WHEN

I STILL REMEMBER WHEN

The hill, where my wife and I live, is quiet and peaceful, the kind of place where the wind whispers old memories from time to time. Many years ago, me and my best friend used to run and play up here. Just two boys, often barefoot and full of dreams, racing the sunset, shouting nonsense, laughing until we could hardly breathe. Back then, it felt like we had all the time in the world. Forever was something we believed in, without question and without doubt.

We were inseparable. Everyone said so. We built forts from scrap wood, rode bikes down dirt trails pretending they were mountains, and made plans that stretched far beyond the what we could see. We didn’t know much, but we knew each other. And in a way, that was enough for us.

But life doesn’t stay still, no matter how much you want it to. It starts slow, just a shift in schedules, a new interest here, a new worry there. The kind of things that sneak in while you’re still laughing, still playing. You don’t even notice the ground starting to change beneath your feet until you look up one day and realize the trail isn’t quite the same anymore.

We never drifted far, just enough to feel the difference. And still, there was always that bond. Even when we weren’t side by side every day, we carried something unspoken between us. Like a bridge made of every shared joke, every scraped knee, every late-night talk about nothing or about everything.

Then came that day. The one no one ever expects.

He was only eighteen. It was the kind of loss that knocks the breath out of you. I remember the phone call. I remember the tone in my mother’s voice when she told me. I remember the silence after. And I remember how the world, which once felt so full of promise, suddenly felt too quiet… too still and too empty.

Years have passed since then. Many years. Yet, some mornings I step onto the porch of this house, built right here on the same hill where we once played, and I can almost see us. Two boys running wild, chasing clouds, believing nothing could ever change.

Sometimes I sit on the porch and wonder what it would be like if he were here. Would we sit side by side in rocking chairs, sipping coffee, laughing at our old adventures? Would we talk about our kids and grandkids, our jobs, the aches in our backs and knees? Would we still believe in forever, the way we used to?

Those are the questions that don’t have answers to. Why was he taken so soon? Why am I still here? Why does sorrow linger in a heart long after time has moved on?

I’ve asked God those questions more times than I can count. But God didn’t answer with explanations. Instead, He answered with His Peace.

There’s a kind of peace that doesn’t erase the pain but wraps itself around it.

A kind of comfort that doesn’t come from understanding, but from God’s loving Spirit. I’ve felt it on quiet mornings, when the sun rises over the hill. I’ve felt it when the wind brushes through the trees just right. I feel it in the stillness.

Sometimes, God chooses to use our deepest losses to remind us of things we might forget in the busyness of life.

Like how precious time really is.

How love doesn’t end just because a person’s gone.

How the memories that feel like heartache can also become very sacred.

And maybe, most of all, how eternity isn’t just a far-off place, but something that lives quietly in the spaces where love was once shared.

I don’t know why my friend had to leave so soon. I probably never will, at least not on this side of heaven. But I do know that his life, even though it was short, still echoes through these hills. In the laughter of my own grand children when they run across the yard. In the way I try to live a little more mindful, knowing now how fragile the days can be.

So I’ll keep sitting on this porch, sipping my coffee, watching the seasons change and the sun rise. And when the wind carries the memory of laughter from the past, I always smile and whisper, “I Still Remember When.”