Songfacts®:

• The title in this song is the giveaway. What falls through holes in the floor of Heaven? Tears, of course, that's what the rain is. The song starts with the death of the narrator's grandmother but progresses to the premature death of his wife, but she can be anyone you want her - or him - to be - not necessarily a wife or lover, but a parent, sibling, child, or just a friend. In a 1999 interview with Jim Bessman of Billboard magazine, Steve Wariner echoed these sentiments. The song, he said, struck a chord with many people who related it to their own personal family losses.
  
  Unsurprisingly, it also struck a chord with the C&W establishment, winning both Single Of The Year and Song Of The Year at the 1998 Country Music Association Awards. >>>

  Suggestion credit:
  Alexander Baron - London, England
• Steve Wariner wrote the song with Billy Kirsch. In a 2026 appearance on the Off The Record podcast, Wariner talked about how the song came together with an assist from his wife Caryn.
  
  "Billy Kirsch came to my house and we were sitting in the living room having coffee and talking about which direction we're going to head," Wariner said. "Karen was in the kitchen and I said, 'Let's write us a grooving thing today. Real cool.' I started playing this little riff on guitar that was grooving and cool, and Karen poked her head around and she goes, 'You guys haven't ever written a story song, have you?' and I go, 'No.' And that's all she said.
  
  Then Billy goes, 'Well, I heard this comment, there's holes in the floor of heaven,' and I went, 'What? Say that again?' He said it again and boom, we start writing it."
  
  After working on the song that day, they got together for another session, where they finished it.
• The song stirs up some powerful emotions, which Wariner learned before he recorded it, when he played it for him manager's mother. "When I got done singing it, she had a little tear rolling down her cheek," Wariner told Off The Record. "And she goes, 'I love that song. That is so sweet. I don't ever want to hear it again.'"