“Dying is easy,” he said. “It’s living that’s hard.”

These are the stark words from a friend who had survived the brutality of the Vietnam War. With no chance of empathizing with the horrors he had experienced there, I have kept his words with me for a long time, but for my own personal reasons.

Death happens whenever it happens. Life happens when we make it happen. We were handed a ticket the day we were born that said, “Good for One Life.” The ticket didn’t say, “Good for One Long Life.” Turn it over and on the back, it said, “Expiration Date: Unknown.” Some of us get to live a hundred years and others have to cash in their tickets before they’re old enough to drive a car. One thing is for certain. If you are breathing while you’re reading this column, your body’s GPS is guiding you toward the end of the road and there is no U-turn or recalculating coming up to bring you back to the beginning.

Our birthday tickets said, “Good for One Life,” and not “For One Good Life.” I used to think that some people left this world and their lives were forgotten before the dirt had settled over their graves. Whether it’s a good or bad life and whether we die young or live old, everyone has been put on this earth for a purpose. If a woman lived alone her whole life and never married, had no children, did no community service, worshipped at no church, you’d think that her occasional encounters with people were of no significance. Yet, when she smiled one Monday morning at the clerk in the grocery store, she might have unknowingly prevented a suicide. If she grew a flower garden in summers, she could have brightened the lives of children who rode by on their bicycles and glanced across the road at her flaming red roses and her bright yellow tulips.

With the ticket of life comes the challenge to honor it. American attorney Elizabeth Edwards said, “The days of our lives, for all of us, are numbered. … We know that. And yes, there are certainly times when we aren’t able to muster as much strength and patience as we would like. It’s called being human. But I have found that in the simple act of living with hope, and in the daily effort to have a positive impact in the world, the days I do have are made all the more meaningful and precious. And for that I am grateful.”

People who bring us pain and suffering come with their purpose, too. They make us learn how to cope and how to forgive so we can move on to see the sun rise another day. My parents had both died after loving the booze in the bottle more than they did me. I’ve come to an understanding why they had succumbed to illness and poverty, and I’ve learned to forgive, and now I feel grateful to them, for they have given me my life.

Life is but a small treasure box of moments. Anybody who’s past 60 years of age will tell you that the human mind vividly remembers something that happened 50 years ago, but easily forgets what occurred last week. I think our brains are hard-wired that way to show us that 60 or so years of life is only a few ticks of the universe’s clock. Our memories remind us how short life really is, no matter how many wrinkles we wear upon our faces.

Many people don’t want to face the fact of their own deaths. Scottish biographer James Boswell shrugged his shoulders at death. He wrote, “It matters not how a man dies, but how he lives. The act of dying is not of importance, it lasts so short a time.”

I don’t find it morbid to think about my own death. The fact that my diminishing days are crossed off the calendar each year causes me to focus on the present moment with a relaxed sense of urgency. Take that walk today because my body may not let me tomorrow. Don’t put off this afternoon to go fishing. The weather’s getting colder. Get in touch with family and friends I haven’t seen in a while. I do these things because I’m in touch with my mortality. The inevitability of my death drives me to live each day with passion, with laughter and with love.

Nicholas A. McGirr, author of “Life of Death” wrote, “Death truly does have life, and walks with and lives through us every day.”

“Dying is easy. It’s living that’s hard.” The burden of hardships, failures, struggles and disappointments helps us appreciate the good times we have that make us happy to be alive.

Young adult fiction writer Gayle Forman wrote, “Life is a big fat gigantic stinking mess and that’s the beauty of it, too.”

The “Good for One Life” tickets we were awarded at birth didn’t come with instructions. We have to write our own “how to” manual. For me, there are two simple sentences I carry in my back pocket every single day.

“Death happens whenever it happens. Life happens when I make it happen.”

Rich Strack can be reached at richiesadie11@gmail.com.