We deal with loss only when we have to.

It hardly ever seems that I intend to begin writing, but rather that something inspires me to write, so much so that I have no choice in the matter. This is one of those times.

In addition to being an author, I’m also a member of the California Army National Guard. Like everyone else, my civilian life is my major focus, but it’s interrupted at regular intervals by brief periods of military duty. For most of us, our service is really just part-time. We’re a small community of soldiers employed full-time in the real-world at virtually every job under the sun from real estate agents to trucker drivers to policemen. What brings us together is that we’ve all made the commitment to be there when we’re called.

At my latest duty period, I was shocked to find that one of the soldiers in my Battalion had passed away. It wasn’t due to combat in Iraq, like you would think, or an accident or even foul play. The kid, I call him that because he was eight years younger than me, collapsed at his residence, the victim of a brain embolism.

I barely knew him. Really, I had only had random, casual conversations with him each consisting of less than a handful of words. But I knew who he was. He was an average guy with an average life. Unremarkable, you would think, but his death had an impact on those of us who survived him. I saw the anguish in the faces of his friends and in the eyes of a friend of mine who had recently worked with him, but I didn’t fully understand the depth of the meaning until recently.

It’s taken me thirty-eight years and the passing of an almost-stranger to understand that one man’s life has meaning to those around him greater than the sum of his own life. With the passing of both my parents, I thought I had finally come to understand just how fleeting this existence is. But this most recent death has awakened me to the possibility of the nearness of my own demise. I wonder, is it borrowed time or predestined fate that leads us through our lives?

My brother is leaving today for a second tour in Iraq and I expect to be joining him early next year. There are times when I wonder what it’s all for, but I have the answer when I know that I’m in the hearts of those closest to me. It’s not about how or when we die, but how we live and our relations with those around us that matter the most. Tank Abbot once said that it’s not about winning or losing, but rather it’s about the fight and how we conduct ourselves—unexpectedly deep wisdom.