I have been staring at an empty Word doc for 20 minutes because what I want to write about seems so petty and futile, but I have deadline tomorrow. Today I found out that someone died. I didn’t know him very well but then you don’t have to know someone well to be sad when they pass do you? I am feeling reflective because I shook his hand only a matter of days ago and had a laugh with his beautiful wife whom he married just months ago. And then today… well today he is gone.

Life, dear readers, is fragile. It is precious and real. It is a gift that is bestowed upon us to do with as we please. This person who passed away… there was no overdose, no car accident, no foul play, it was sudden and no one saw it coming. And that is why it is causing shockwaves around everyone who knew of him, let alone those that were actually close to him. I don’t even feel like I have much of a right to talk about him, but I do feel that tragedy is only really tragedy if the people left behind don’t learn from it.

Everything in life is transient, from the clothes you wear, to the opinions or thoughts you may have, the house you live in, the car you drive, even people. The only thing that remains the same is love. Not love in the romantic, Valentine’s day cellophane rose kind of way but the kind of love we have for our fellow man. Even the ones you hardly know or don’t even know at all. To love is to be. It is a verb, a doing word, as we were taught. It is to be compassionate and kind. It is to feel grateful and positive and unselfish. It is the reason why we are all here. No I’m not about to harp on about God or any other spiritual mumbo jumbo, I am just referring to a normal, human emotion that we are all capable of yet we so often withhold, because… well I don’t know why we do. Scared maybe? I guess when you give of yourself so abundantly you feel vulnerable.

Lewis Marnell’s death has affected us in this way because he was a peer. We saw him around the city. We’ve heard him DJ, we’ve watched him skate. Some of us have had a beer and a laugh with him. He was one of us and then he was taken away. His young wife had a husband a week ago and now she doesn’t. His story didn’t play out like it was meant to. He didn’t become a father and then grow old and watch his family expand before dying peacefully in his sleep at the age of 85. Instead his life was snatched away from him out of nowhere. What makes any of us think that we could be any different?

Live now. Tell everyone you love how you feel about them. Put out positivity, grab opportunity. Dance! Eat! Laugh! Cry! Have crazy sex! Squeeze everything you can out of every single day, every hour and every minute. Stop talking and start doing. Whatever has happened before this moment put it down as experience and move on. And when you get a minute, stop and be grateful. If you don’t believe in any kind of God then that’s cool; be grateful to those who have lost their life in order to teach you how to hold on to yours. Be grateful for Lewis.