The Rainbow Comes and Goes: A Mother and Son on Life, Love, and Loss

by Anderson Cooper

It is a cliché, but a true one, and I understand it only now: Health is your most treasured gift. As long as you have it, you are independent, master of yourself. Illness grabs the soul. You plunge in and out of hope, fearing you will never recover. All that I have been, all that I am, all that I might become no longer exist. I am alone. Nothing can distract from the truth of this finality.

“The rainbow comes and goes,” Wordsworth wrote, and boy, was he right.

The rainbow comes and goes.” I like the slight note of resignation that phrase implies—the acceptance that things can’t always be good. The rainbow does come and go for all of us, but what is remarkable about you is that you still believe it is out there even when you can’t see it, and you keep moving forward, searching for it, even on the darkest of days. That is what you have always done. You believe the rainbow will always return and that, around the corner, a new adventure waits:

I find it reassuring knowing the rainbow comes and goes. It helps me accept the way things often are. In every life, you have moments of blinding beauty and happiness, and then you land in a dark cave and there is no color, no sky. Then the rainbow returns, sometimes only briefly, but it always does come back. You have to believe that it will, even in the darkest of times. That belief is what is really important. Nothing is meant to last forever. Our lives are fleeting. We surround ourselves with objects, collect things, try to hold on to people and money and status, but it doesn’t last. We are not meant always to be happy, and who would want to be? Happiness would become meaningless if it were a constant state. If you accept that, then you will not be surprised when something bad occurs,

The rainbow comes and goes. Enjoy it while it lasts. Don’t be surprised by its departure, and rejoice when it returns.

I do now know the world, the good and the bad, and I would rather greet it with open arms; it is worth the hurt, the sting of loss or betrayal. Yes, worth it all. Hope is essential. The alternative is to stop living. It never occurs to me that the rainbow will not come back.