Butcher paper posters emblazed with “we love you” gradually replaced spirit week decorations. Grief counselors were called in. The Homecoming game was cancelled. Everyone understood “the show must go on” was a concept that, in this case, did not apply.
I’d known Josh for years. We both sat in the back of the bus. I can still see the signature half-smile that would creep onto Josh’s face when he contemplated something mischievous or funny.
The newspaper said it was an accident. Josh’s brother didn’t remember he’d reloaded the revolver. Josh was dead before he reached the hospital. He was just 14.
I remember the first time I saw the image of Josh’s face carved into his gravestone. I stared in horror, and a cavern swelled in my chest. The engraving didn’t look like Josh. Or maybe, even in my youth I knew—such a young face simply didn’t belong on a tombstone.
Josh’s death wasn’t the first time I experienced the loss of someone before their time.
A year earlier, I walked the photo-lined hallways of my friend’s house shortly after her 16 year-old sister was killed in a car accident. My friend was left to navigate life suddenly as an only-child; her single mom was left with half her heart.
I sat in a pew at the funeral of another teenage friend’s mom who’d died of cancer. He would graduate from high school without his mom there to see it.
By the time I turned 16, my exposure to death was outsized. I was young. My heart was tender, and my mind impressionable. Up close I saw once-in-a-lifetime loss, and in a way, it became the norm.
I understood in my bones: I could die tomorrow. I’d seen it with my own eyes. Life is fragile. Life is short. To me, “live each day as if it were your last” wasn’t just a cliché suggestion. It was guidance that made perfect sense. I recognized with certainty, I need to make the most of the time I have.
In most ways, awareness of my mortality has served me well. Every day is meaningful to me, no matter how mundane. Not a day passes when I don’t feel gratitude for life’s simple pleasures—my morning coffee, the sound of my children laughing, the feeling of my bed at the end of the day. I think about what I’ll consider important when I’m on my deathbed, and that perspective informs how I spend my time.
Looking back, I see now that I essentially started practicing what ancient Stoics called Memento Mori—the purposeful reflection on mortality—at age thirteen. Still a kid, my worldview naturally fell in alignment with the likes of Marcus Aurelius: “You could leave life right now. Let that determine what you say and think.” It’s a gift to be regularly reminded that life is finite, it keeps my eyes open to what’s beautiful about it.
As much as it’s been a blessing, though, it’s been a burden, too.
For as long as I can remember, I’ve felt the constant weight of knowing my time on earth is limited. Starting in my teens, I had a strong premonition that I’d die young. Now that I’ve safely made it to my 40’s, the feeling has changed in nature, but it’s still there. The clock is ticking. I’m aware of it every day—time isn’t just passing by, it’s running out.
So many of my greatest joys and priorities these days are slow simmers and long projects. Intricate experiences that no amount of ‘carpe diem’ could ever contain. If I actually did die tomorrow, despite my best efforts, many important endeavors would be left painfully unfinished. My anxiety spikes just thinking about it.
Of course, much of the discomfort is because I have two young kids. As much as I try to make every interaction count, the reality is, raising good humans is the cumulation of countless actions, not one or two lessons. I couldn’t instantly impart onto my toddler the importance of perseverance after he impulsively declared he wanted to quit soccer. No matter what I say to my daughter now, it’ll be years before she will be capable of grasping the beauty and power that lives in her little body. And it’s impossible to imbue our family values in a single dinner time conversation.
Launching my children—at least launching children with the character and tools they need to navigate the world—is the culmination of a million tiny and intentional, but otherwise relatively unremarkable, moments put together. And like most endeavors of value, the project will span a great deal of time.
“Live each day as if it were your last” may be a helpful kick in the pants for most people, but for me it also weaves into each day a prickly sense of pressure and urgency. It emphasizes grand gestures and big events, and it diminishes small contributions made over time. Filling the refrigerator, or bringing home books from the library, may not be bucket list items, but they are potent little expressions of what I value most.
The pressure and urgency to do everything now, all at once, is toxic when it’s not counterbalanced with the very plausible possibility: there’s plenty of life left to live.
I’ve recently decided to no longer allow the stopwatch that’s haunted me since I was a teen, to rob me from the ease that comes with believing that I quite possibly will get to see my most cherished endeavors through to their end.
I’ve found beauty and balance in trusting that, while I could die any moment, I could just as likely not.
So every time I feel like time is running out, or every time I feel the pressure to instantly impart a life lesson that probably takes most kids years to learn, rather than succumbing to the panicked worry that I won’t get another chance, instead I remember—it doesn’t all need to be done in a day. And I will myself to believe “there will be time.”
And while it’s quite possible I’ll die tomorrow, for me it’s every bit as inspiring to believe in the possibility that I won’t.