What We Leave Behind When We Are Gone

They were my age.

That’s the thought that keeps circling back, uninvited, at odd moments. In the grocery store checkout line. During a work call. At 3 a.m. when sleep won’t come. My friend was my age, and now they are gone.

When someone your age dies, grief arrives with a companion: a relentless inventory of your own life. Not the kind you can ignore or postpone. The kind that demands honest answers to questions you’ve been avoiding.

The Permission Grief Gives Us

We talk about giving ourselves permission to grieve, to feel sadness, anger, disbelief. But there’s another permission that comes with loss, one we discuss less often: the permission to be searingly honest about how we’re living.

Grief strips away the social niceties, the “I’m fine” autopilot responses, the comfortable numbness of routine. It asks: Are you actually living the life you want to be living?

And sometimes, the answer is uncomfortable.

I have been thinking about friendships, real friendship, not the performative kind we post about on social media or reference in day-to-day life. The friends who know your middle-of-the-night worries. The ones who have seen you at your worst and somehow still show up. The friendships that require effort, vulnerability, and time.

When was the last time I made that effort? When did I last prioritize those connections over my to-do list, over “just one more email,” over the endless excuse of being too busy?

How do we spend our time? That’s the question grief keeps asking me.

The Friendships We Take for Granted

There is a particular cruelty in how busy life makes us strangers to the people we love most. We assume there will always be more time. The drinks/dinner date we will actually schedule. The phone call we actually make when we say, “call you soon.” Or that reunion trip we kept talking about.

And then there isn’t more time. And all those “next times” become never.

I am thinking about the friends I have let drift. Not because of any falling out or dramatic ending, but simply because life got full and I stopped making space. I told myself they understood. That they were busy too. That we would pick up right where we left off when things slowed down.

But what if things never slow down? What if “when things calm down” is a myth we tell ourselves to avoid the harder truth: Do we make time for what we value, and everything else is just an excuse?

The Legacy Question That Won’t Let Go

Grief also asks the question I spend my professional life helping leaders explore: What legacy are you building?

Not the LinkedIn version. Not the carefully curated highlight reel. The real legacy, the one measured in how people felt in your presence, what you stood for when it wasn’t convenient, the difference you made when no one was watching.

When my friend died, people shared stories. Specific moments. Small kindnesses that were not small at all. The way they forged a life of living boldly and creatively. How they improved life for others, in their work and by their acts of kindness.

And I found myself wondering: What would people say about me?

Would they talk about my accomplishments, my résumé, the things I achieved? Or would they remember moments of connection, times I was fully present, instances where I chose relationship over productivity?

What are we leaving behind?

The Inventory I Didn’t Want to Take

So, I have been taking inventory. Not the time-talent-treasure one I wrote about, but a different accounting:

• Who are my people? The ones who matter most—not theoretically, but practically. And when was the last time I told them? Showed them?
• What am I doing out of obligation versus intention? How much of my schedule is filled with “shoulds” instead of choices that align with who I want to be?
• Am I building the legacy I actually want? Or am I just building the one that looks impressive from the outside?
• What would I regret not doing, not saying, not being—if my time ended tomorrow?
• When did I stop prioritizing joy? When did connection become something I’d “get to” once everything else was done?

These aren’t comfortable questions. But grief doesn’t really care about our comfort. It cares about truth.

How Do You Grieve Properly?

I don’t know if there’s a “proper” way to grieve. Maybe that is not even the right question.

What I am learning is this: grief is both deeply personal and strangely universal. It is the weight of a specific loss (this person, this friendship, this particular absence). And it’s also a reminder that none of us are permanent, that time is the one resource we can’t replenish, that “later” isn’t guaranteed.

Maybe we honor grief not just by feeling it, but by letting it ask us hard questions. By letting loss remind us of what matters. By using the clarity that comes with pain to realign how we’re living.

Maybe proper grieving means refusing to waste the wake-up call.

The Questions Grief Keeps Asking

I still do not have good answers to all of them. Maybe that’s the point, grief doesn’t demand answers as much as it demands attention.

So, I’m sitting with these questions:

• Who needs to hear from you today?
• What friendship have you been taking for granted, assuming there will always be more time?
• If your legacy were written today, would it reflect what you actually value?
• What are you postponing that actually can’t wait?
• When did you last tell the people who matter that they matter?
• What would you regret not doing, not saying, not being?

I think about my friend who was my age and now is no longer here. And I think about how many of us are walking around half-asleep, assuming we have forever, prioritizing the urgent over the important, letting the people we love most become the ones we connect with least.

Grief is asking me to wake up. To stop assuming there is always later. To build the legacy I want while I still can.

Maybe that is how we properly grieve: by living with more intention because of the loss. By letting absence remind us to be more present. By honoring what’s gone by, being more honest about what remains.

What Will You Leave Behind?

I don’t know how much time any of us have. None of us do. That’s the uncomfortable truth grief forces us to acknowledge.

But I know this: we are all leaving a legacy whether we are intentional about it or not. We are all spending our time in ways that either align with our values or betray them. We are all choosing, actively or passively, what kind of friend, parent, partner, leader, human we want to be.

The only question is whether we are making those choices consciously.

So, I am wondering: What legacy are you building with the time you have? With the friendships you’re nurturing or neglecting? With the moments you’re fully present for or scrolling past?

Who needs to hear from you today? Not eventually, but today?

What are you waiting for?

#KeepWonderingWhy #Grief #Legacy #Friendship #LifeReflections #WhatMatters #TimeIsPrecious #IntentionalLiving #CherishPeople #NoRegrets

This one is for you, my friend. You were my age, and you reminded me that none of us get to assume we have forever. Thank you for that gift, even though I wish you were still here to receive the thanks properly.

And to everyone else: call your friends. Schedule that coffee date. Say the thing you have been meaning to say. Build the legacy you want while you still can.

Because “later” isn’t promised to any of us. And proper grieving might mean refusing to waste the time we have left.

In memory. In gratitude. In the commitment to live more intentionally because of the reminder.