It’s always a strange thing when you think about your high school reunions.

I haven’t had the privilege of one yet. I only graduated high school a little over two years ago. My mom has gone to two already, her 25th and her 30th. She said that when she went, it was really weird seeing how everyone had grown up and what different people had done with their lives. Everyone was drinking and discussing their jobs, their families, and reminiscing about old class pranks, sports highlights, and what was considered "hip" in those days.

My mom said, though, that one of the saddest parts of the evening was looking at the display of all your classmates who couldn’t make it to the reunion under any circumstance. She said the display was like a tree, with each branch holding a picture and some dates.

This past week, I’ve had a taste of a glimpse of my high school reunion, whenever it may be. I already know one of the pictures that’s going to be up there.

I wasn’t terribly close to him. We sat at the lunch table together though. He was extremely good friends with one of my good friends. I went to his house twice, I think.

It’s sort of given me a dose of being an adult. I’m not saying I haven’t had my fair dosage before, but there’s something awful and piercing when one of your classmates, someone who was irreplaceable in your daily life during some of your grade school years, is gone. It’s life, passing you by. Part of the invincible feeling you held in your teens is destroyed.

There are all these memories racing through your head, and suddenly, you’re transported back in time to when you had a little more spring in your step. The future was wide open, and you had a thousand choices and a thousand inconsequential things filling you up. Everything you did then, would have the utmost impact in the years ahead: from a chemistry quiz the next morning, to the delicate balance of word choice to your locker mate.

How small those things seem now.

Somehow, every very serious thing comes down to life and death, but you don’t appreciate the gravity of those conversations except with age and experience. What you do with your life, with every precious year you’re given, doesn’t become so precious until you’re very old; or if you’re very lucky, you’ve been given the right perspective early on.

I’ve been given some perspective. I have enough perception and common sense to know that it’s only a little that I’ve been given: from some personal tragedies, some hard work and now this. We all, myself included, have a long ways to go yet.

But if you’re still reading this, just grab today. Hold it, smell it, taste it, feel it. Be thankful that you can grasp today and be able to live it. No one knows how many more days you can until suddenly, in one millisecond of recognition, we know it’s zero.