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# The Fall
- URL: https://www.resiliencerising.ca/the-fall/
- Published: 2026-10-06T19:28:46.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-06T19:28:46.000Z
- Description: In the dawn of a fall morning, on my drive, I picked up the phone to call. Each ring felt like a lifetime.
- Author: Resilience Rising

In the dawn of a fall morning, on my drive, I picked up the phone to call. Each ring felt like a lifetime.

The night before, a friend had called me from the darkest place, in his darkest moment. His suffering words. His gritted teeth audible through the phone. His anger. His pain. Something in all of it was uncomfortably familiar.

It kept me up late, emotionally time travelling back through my own life, to friends who are no longer here. To the times my concern for them had gone stagnant under my own concerns. To the times I did not ask, because I did not want to offend them.

You see, that darkness is not foreign to me. And likely not to many of the people this finds.

I did not let it accumulate. I caught myself holding my breath, a foreboding tension in my chest, afraid a far too familiar darkness had done its worst. The ringing stopped in sync with my heartbeat, and his voice came through on the other end.

"Hey brother."

Relaxation trickled through me, warming me as the light came up.

I will not say what was discussed in that conversation, as what I said is not what was important. What was important was the care to call, the ears to listen.

And that became the routine for months. The morning call, through all the seasons. Conversations of all kinds, from simple pleasures to complex issues, covering smiles and tears. If it went to football, it went to football. If it went to movies and music, it went to movies and music. If it went to tears, it went to tears. I called and I listened. That was the point.

Those conversations are ours, and I hold them dear even now.

He has told me since that there was nothing I could have said to correct what was going on in his head. Nothing to take the feeling away. But I could be there, and I was.

The rhythm of the conversations moved with the months, and over time I found the seed of hope starting to sprout. Simple check-ins. Sometimes as simple as asking what, if anything, went well that day. When fall came back around in the years that followed, I could sometimes hear the season in his voice before he could, and I would tell him. You felt this way last year too.

His words, many times: we see ourselves in how others see us. And he saw someone caring for him.

He has told me what those calls meant to him. But the work that followed was his. His effort to hate himself slowly transitioned to effort to care for himself. He sought help, through group and individual work, and began caring for himself in ways I never could have done for him.

My calls perhaps became a bit more sparse, seeing what had taken root. But now he called me more. And those calls, over the years, changed with him, until they were him sharing his transformation. Learning from the darkness, but not letting it take hold of him with the grip it once did.

He thanks me more than I know how to receive. He says he can never pay it back, so he pays it forward.

Not everyone in his life made the climb with him. That cost, to him and to others like him, including myself, is real, and it is a story for another day.

Now he is the one who checks in. On the friend silent too long. On the stranger alone in an empty chair. No script. No fixing. The same simple check-in. Perhaps an inquiry of what went well today, once handed to him.

I called him again recently, almost eight years on, in the same weeks of fall that used to pull him under. This year, he told me, he was processing it instead of reliving it. I realized I was no longer holding my breath.

I think about the friends who are no longer here. The words I acknowledged and did not answer the way I wish I had. The question I held back so I would not offend. Even when the words were not always said, I believe that deep down they knew I cared, and that I loved them. I would do anything to be able to tell them. So now I tell the ones who are here, and carry the memory of the ones who are not.

The act of checking in is what needed to be shared. It is, in fact, the origin story of these Check-In essays.

Every time I have ended one by checking in on you, it came from a phone ringing in the dawn of a fall morning, and a friend who, I am forever grateful, picked up.

Most of us do not stay quiet because we do not care. We stay quiet because we are afraid of offending, or of intruding. So the concern goes stagnant, and the question waits for a better moment that does not come.

There are so many people suffering in silence. Not because there is nothing to say, but because nothing about it is public. No loss anyone heard about. No date on a calendar. Nothing that would give someone a reason to ask. You just know something is off, and they say fine, and the quiet goes on. If that is you, you are seen, and you are not as alone in it as the silence tells you.

Sometimes you will hear it when someone says, yeah, I am fine. The words are right, and the conviction does not quite land. When you do, do not rush past those words and start into your own sharing. The check-in is the inquiry, and the offer to be their ears if they ever need to get out of their head. That means the world to people sometimes. Just letting someone know. I appreciate you. I love you. I am here.

And if you have your own story of a time darkness had a grip on you, and you feel ready to tell it, sharing it may be one of the strongest things you can do. Not first. Not to make it about you. But when the moment is there. The recognition can do wonders for someone who believes they are alone, isolated from any good they can still see. If you have been there, you know what it would have meant to have someone meet you there and climb out of that pit alongside you, not with advice, but with the hope that it can get better.

You will not always hear it. Sometimes the person is fine. Sometimes the silence means nothing. And some people carry the pain so quietly and well that it disguises itself as light. Check in anyway. Not because you can diagnose the darkness, but because care does not need certainty before it speaks.

If what you hear sounds like they may not want to be here, ask them plainly. Asking will not put the thought there. And you do not have to hold it alone. A local crisis line can help you too, even when you are the one worried about someone else. If the danger is immediate, call emergency services.

Some of what people carry is not only hidden. Sometimes it has changed the way their mind works, through no choice of their own, and with it what they are able to show you. Even those trained to help, with all their skill and care, cannot always reach it alone, and the work often takes time. So it cannot be your responsibility. You are not the keeper of anyone else's darkness. Your part is simpler than that: to be there when their own mind has become an echo chamber. People do find their way through, often with more than one kind of help. Your call can be one of them.

And if you are reading this having already lost someone, hear this. You may wish you had said something, or asked, or called. That wish is love. It is not proof that you could have changed what happened. The love you gave them was real, whether or not every word was said. You are allowed to carry their memory without carrying the blame. And if that weight is too heavy to hold alone, that is exactly the kind of call worth making for yourself.

If you are the one who said fine and it was not, you deserve that call too. And if the darkness is heavier than a friend's call can hold, bringing it to someone qualified to help you carry it might be the strongest move you have.

So this time, I am not the one checking in on you. I am asking you to be the one who checks in.

It is simple. There is someone on your mind, waiting without knowing they are waiting. Remind them that you are there, and that you care for them. You know the words best. They do not need to be the right ones, because it is the ears that matter. A call, a coffee, a text even.

If it is a ring, it may feel like a lifetime on your end. On theirs, it may be the first sound to break the silence.

Check in.