October 20th, 2015. It was an early morning. I’m asleep, my best friend and roommate is sleep in a bunk bed in the same room. I wake up to a text. It’s about 6am. A mother-like figure in my life has texted me a link to a new article of a motorcycle crash that had happened the night before. It had resulted in a death. The young man’s name who was listed as the deceased was quite the coincidence. It also happened to be the name of one of my best childhood friends. Just a coincidence, I’m sure.
The mom asks me, “is this our (my friend’s name. We’ll call him Tony)?” He had a pretty common name, so I figured it couldn’t be. I reply with the same mindset. But then I notice the middle initial. It’s the same initial. My heart sank. I wake up my roommate. I contact everyone I could find. He was dead. Younger than me. Barely into his twenties. One of my best friends died in a motor cycle accident.
The days that followed were a nightmare. Everything seemed crumble. I was constantly in contact with Tony’s parents. I did my best to make sure that all the arrangements were taken care of. But it hurt for so many reasons. For one, I had recently lost an uncle and my grandfather. Tony was always there for me with those loses. Now he couldn’t be there for me for his. Second, it was my family that had taught him how to ride a motorcycle. Even though his parents showed now anger towards me, I couldn’t help be feel like I deserved it. Third, Tony and I hadn’t been keeping up. I hadn’t kept in contact and I knew that he was mad at me about it. That chance was gone.
For what seemed like months afterwards I would have terrible dreams where I would find that Tony was still alive. And he was always mad at me for not being there for him. I’d wake, sure, but the hardest part was knowing that was probably how he felt about me.
At his funeral I got to see some of the best friends that I had made over the years… they all cried. I cried. We paid our respects.The funeral home was bursting with people. It was easily the hardest day of my life. And I was never the same after that day.
Why do I share that story? It’s honestly one of the hardest stories to share. But it brings home a lesson that I didn’t learn until that very day, a lesson that I hope others could learn without that experience: life is short.
So often when you hear that phrase, the usual sentiment is that you need to live without regrets. Go skydiving or something. And that’s a cheap version of this lesson. No, what I mean by “life is short” is something far more important than that.
Life is so short, so don’t waste it on the things that don’t matter. You never know when you’ll go to meet our Heavenly Father. Be prepared. A relationship with God is the only thing you get to take with you. And if you’re twenty-something, that doesn’t mean that you have sixty years to figure the whole God thing out.
When you’re face with the concept of the brevity of life, petty things seem to fall away. There was a buddy of Tony’s that I didn’t get along with. He and I fought over the most petty things for about ten years. All that faded away when Tony passed. Now he attends church with me. He worked the video for my wedding. He’s one of my best friends.
In short, people are precious once you realize how short life is. Every moment could be the last. Rather than taking them skydiving, just let them know how you appreciate them. And most importantly, remember that life is always short, no matter how long you live, if you view it in light of eternity. So look to Christ, the who has defeated death and call you his own.
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