Legacy

One drop of water falls in a pond.  The forces exerted on that drop are massive as related to its own size and internal integrity: within a blink of an eye the drop is ripped apart to become indistinguishable from the remainder of the pond.  Within a split second the original body of water that constituted that drop has irreparably separated and spread far enough to be truly impossible to gather together again.  In minutes, it is dispersed through-out the pond and much of seeped into the ground or even evaporated back into the air.  Enough years pass and the trillions of trillions of molecules that made up the drop have integrated themselves into every liquid or gaseous concentration of water the planet.  There are thousands of them in everything you drink.

But that initial tear, the rip from body to an all encompassing nothingness has it's impact.  The drop is gone, but we see its legacy left behind on the surface of the pond: spreading out in ever greater ripples.  An observer sits on the edge of the pond, monitoring.  If the pond small enough, or the drop big enough and close enough to shore, our observer will be able to record its death knell.  The ripples reach the edge and splash up against the walls which hold the water in.  Over time, a couple of seconds perhaps, the ripples experience self-interference, boundary conditions  come into play and all the rest of the world enters in.  The observer losses track of the distinct impact of the drop and it is lost forever.  As the pond gets wider, becoming a lake and then an ocean the drop experiences no less force but our observer is forever blocked from access.  Only the rarest drop is large enough and close enough to land for them to see the ripple in the water.