“J.R., Wiley is dead.”

I didn't know Wiley nor J.R. until yesterday.

Now I know them.  And Wiley's mother too.

A news report referred to a post that went viral.  A post by a father on his 8-year old son's death.  A post in which he wondered whether all that time at work is worth it.

So, I read his post.  It is honest. It is moving. It is tragic.  I then read the mother's public grieving.

I cannot even begin to imagine what it feels like to suddenly lose a 8-year old child.

The father writes:

Around 5:40am, the next morning I woke up for a series of back to back meetings. I did a Peloton ride, took an analyst call from my home office, one with a colleague on the drive to work, then the rest at the office. None seem that important now. I left that morning without saying goodbye or checking on the boys. 

While at work, when he was in a meeting, the mother called and said “J.R., Wiley is dead.”  The father writes, "If there’s any lesson to take away from this, it’s to remind others (and myself) not to miss out on the things that matter. "

We fail to ask regularly ask ourselves what really matters to us and, therefore, whether we are living our lives consistent with that.  It is a tragic irony that at work we engage in discussions on what our mission is, and worry about mission creep.  In our personal lives, on the other hand, we don't seem to have a "mission statement" of any sort.

I have ranted and ranted on these topics.  Perhaps because I have never let go of an understanding that life is unpredictable.  Good days aren't forever, and tomorrow could be a bad day.  Death haunts our everyday lives.  Which is also why I critique the "bucket list" that people have, because the list is almost always about trivial pursuits instead of focusing on "the things that matter" that we need to address before we die.

More than anything else, why the monomaniacal devotion to work?  In the grand scheme of things, our existence will not even register in this cosmos.  More powerful and rich and famous people have lived and died, and most of us don't even know any damn thing about them.  If they don't matter, we do?

I will end this with how Wiley's mother ended hers:

If we’ve learned anything at all, it’s that life is fragile and time really can be so cruelly short. We wish a lot of things were different, but mostly we wish we’d had more time. If you are a parent and have any capacity to spend more time with your kids, do. When it ends, there’s just photos and left over things and time is no longer available to you. It is priceless and should not be squandered. Take your vacation days and sabbaticals and go be with them. You will not regret the emails you forgot to send. From now on, if you email or text me and my reply takes longer than expected, know that I am with the people I love sharing my time, creating my new identity and I encourage you to do the same.