I need to tell you about a man I never met.

He died in a car accident on an ordinary Tuesday morning. He was forty-three years old. He had a wife, two children, and a mortgage he had almost paid off. He had plans for the weekend. He had emails he had not answered. He had arguments he had not resolved. He had dreams he had not begun.

He woke up that morning, drank his coffee, kissed his family goodbye, and drove the same route he had driven a thousand times before. He did not know it was the last time. None of us ever do.

His obituary was two paragraphs long. His desk at work was cleared out by Friday. His unread emails were deleted in a batch. The projects he worried about were reassigned. The world kept spinning exactly as it had before.

But something else happened too.