The Measure of a Life

A rumination on life, death, and finding meaning in tragedy.

In May 2025, my grandmother passed away. In November 2025, a friend of mine passed away too. I wrote this a few days afterward.

What's the measure of a life?

Is it the number of years?
Is it family?
Is it places traveled?
Is it financial success?
Is it devotion to a religion?
Is it fame?
Is it power accumulated?
Is it all of the above?

Personally, I don't think it's any one of those, or any one thing, really.

"What's the meaning of life?" is a question I think everyone struggles with at some point. I've given that question a lot of thought between my mid teens and now, in my early 30s. I'm not a religious person (not since those aforementioned teen years), so the love of any god and the promise of a sort of Heaven don't mean to me what they might mean to some of you who read this. Maybe God and Heaven are your answers to that question; if they are, that's absolutely okay.

Maybe "What you make it" is an answer. That's a fine one, but as an answer for me, it's too vague, too devoid of objective meaning. And maybe the pursuit of objectivity in this context is a fool’s errand. Life is different for everyone, after all, and any answer I find would still fall under this category. The answer I seek is more specific than that.

Maybe your answer is "love." I think that's close for me, but maybe not entirely accurate. Love is vague, love is hard to define, love can mean something different to everyone. “Love” isn't just one thing - it's an umbrella for several different emotions of varying degrees.

I love my wife. I love my cats. I love my family. I love my friends. I love my coworkers. I love writing. I love pizza. I love being a woman. “Love” is one word that means something different in each of those sentences, and that's just not what I’m looking for in this context.

I think that for me, life is about connections made. It's about the people whose lives I touched in a meaningful way, who I've built real connections with, who actually think of me when we're apart, and who will miss me when I'm gone and cherish me in their memories.

Love is a very large part of that, but I also think it's larger than love in a way that's just impossible to qualify. And maybe as you read this, you balk at the inherent vagueness because I just said that "love" is too vague for me. That's fine, I never claimed to be purely sensical here - I don't even know if it's possible to achieve true objectivity in this pursuit. This is just the best answer I can phrase in words.

But I don't think that's the answer for everyone, probably not even most of you who've read this far. Maybe 17 - maybe even 33 - is too early to have this kind of examination of mortality, and maybe that's raised some eyebrows. It certainly did for a number of people who I discussed this with. But I think it's also human nature to think about how our own lives will end when faced with tragedy.

And who actually knows if this answer will be the same tomorrow, or next week, or in ten years? Life is both long and short, people and ideas change, feelings change, change and loss and trouble and grief are life’s only true constants.

In the end, the measure of our lives is what many of us will be examining as we fall into that final eternal slumber. Some of us never get that opportunity - for some of us, the end comes too quickly, too unexpectedly. And isn't that a terrifying thought? The knowledge that the end is coming may just be the most basic fear we have (it is for me), whether we know when that will be or not.

As some of you know, two people close to me departed this life very recently; one half a year ago, and one just a few days ago. This is what (re-re-)restarted this examination, had me asking this question, about my grandmother, about my friend, and about my own life. I don't want to name either person in this essay or share any details about what happened - partly to protect the privacy of their loved ones, but mostly because they deserve so much more than for their names to be attached to something I'm ultimately writing for and about me. Something that's going to be shared on the Internet, for - no matter how I dress it up or try to spin it, no matter how nicely I try to phrase it - social validation.

We as humans are ultimately flawed, selfish, self-centered beings, and social media is designed as an outlet to exacerbate and (albeit rarely) satisfy those urges. Maybe this is just me justifying feeding that addiction and KEEPING this post about me, but I also think that that's inherently human. “Misery loves company” is a popular saying, but longing for comfort and community in times of mourning or grief is human as well.

My grandmother had been around my entire life. She was a permanent fixture. She was a given. She would never, could never go away. Warm, sweet, caring in that way grandmothers are. She spoke with a thick Vietnamese accent, singing as she made us fried rice or cinnamon toast or eggrolls, and always with a big smile on her face.

She made summer break fun. She'd power walk around town, wearing a big wide-brimmed sunhat and taking each step with an exaggerated, goofy cadence, as we followed behind, slightly embarrassed. We'd walk to the river where she'd pick blackberries as my brother and I played around in the shallow water or on the rocks nearby. We'd walk to a grocery store with a Chinese food counter and have lunch watching people bustle around shopping. We'd walk to a used bookstore a few blocks away and she'd tell us to pick out as many as we wanted.

And now she's just gone. And what does that mean? Someone who had just been a fact of life for 32 years, gone in an afternoon.

Of course I knew it would happen eventually. Of course I knew her deterioration since COVID started meant that the writing was on the wall.

But her passing still serves as the starkest reminder that nothing, no one is permanent. Eventually, we all say goodbye.

My friend was someone who I had only known for 3 of my 33 years on this planet. Only 1/11th of the time I've spent here. But those three years mean so much more than decades of knowing some people in my life. She was a mentor. She was a role model. She had so much love in her heart for her family, for her close friends, for her colleagues, for K-pop, for cooking, for so much of it.

And this week, I've found myself in the denial phase. How is this even possible? I JUST spoke to this friend last Monday. We had plans to work on something together. She CAN'T be gone, it's IMPOSSIBLE for someone I just spoke to last week to be gone, that only happens to people I haven't spoken to in a long time, people who I don't have active plans with, that's how it has ALWAYS worked.

And yet, she is gone. I've reread the email I received about her passing over and over and over again, slowly comprehending it more and more each time, and I will probably read it countless more times before I finally start to believe it. It’s still impossible. We're going to see each other tomorrow. She'll vent to me about her family, about work, about upcoming field trips and calls with teachers, about anything coming up in her life, really. And she'll do it with a smile on her face and a small twinkle in her eye as she does. Just as always.

I think that loss, and grief, and examination of mortality are the most human experiences there are. None of us are ever here for the "correct" amount of time, but all of us experience its inevitability in many different ways.

Even after all of this, I don't really have a point to make. I just wanted to get this off my chest and into words as best as I'm able, and share it in a place where people can see. After all (despite my best efforts), I am only human, and that includes all the pitfalls and imperfections that come with that. I recognize the irony in saying I don't have a point in an essay about searching for a point in life, but that's just how things go sometimes.

To build connection and enrich life (both our own and the lives of those around us) is human. To be loved and missed is human. To fear the end is human. To imagine what my grandmother or friend may have felt in their final moments is human. To worry for my dad, my aunts, my uncles, my cousins, or for my friend's husband and her children and the rest of her large, loving family is human. To share this grief with as many as I can, and especially those who also knew her, is human.

And I hope that, in some way, no matter how small, I was part of the measure of their lives, just as they will always be a part of mine.