There are unexpected times and events in our lives that help mold our values and our character. Here’s one that has had a significant impact upon me.

It was a Monday in 1972. I’m 21 and I awakened at 3:30 a.m. I dragged myself out to my car. I drive to Edison, New Jersey, to the parking lot of a scuba diving store. It is here where three older men and I loaded the back and front seats of our cars with The New York Times, the Newark Star-Ledger, the New York Daily News, a few Wall Street Journals and one or two Barron’s, a financial newspaper, to be delivered to customers in the suburbs of Edison and Highland Park.

This is a seven-day-a-week grind and on Sundays, one New York Times literally weighed 5 pounds. Every inch of the inside of my 1968 Chevy Nova was packed to the roof with newspapers.

One of our “papermen,” as we called ourselves, was named Basil, a 65-year-old Polish guy I got to know well when he and I spent Saturday mornings stuffing Sunday papers with advertisements and preprinted pages before the news and sports sections arrived on the morning of delivery.

Basil was a jolly man with a belly-busting laugh that could rattle the teeth inside your mouth. If he had one bad habit, it was that he was always late. He was the last man to arrive at our pickup location every day.

On this Monday morning, Basil’s tardiness cost him his life. The guys and I had loaded our cars and were ready to begin our deliveries when I saw his white Ford station wagon coming down Route 27 at high speed. He did his usual thing — a U-turn — that would lead him back into the lot where his bundles of papers awaited him.

A heavy wave of helplessness overcame me as I watched the fatal accident take place. When he came out of his U-turn, he didn’t check and see that there was a United States Postal Service box truck right behind him. The truck slammed into the side of Basil’s car, pushing it down the road. When the two vehicles finally disconnected, his station wagon had spun completely around and came to a stop in the parking lot of a hardware store.

I can still smell the smoke from the burning rubber of his tires. I still hear the crash, the sound like a cannon ball exploding into the ground. The other two men and I stood still, trying to comprehend what the three of us had just witnessed at 4 a.m. on a dark morning with no other cars or people nearby.

“Let’s go!” I shouted.

We ran to his car. The driver’s door was wide open. Basil was lying flat with his head against the passenger seat. Blood was coming from his nose and from the corner of his mouth. I was the first to get to him, but once I saw him lying there, I froze, staring, hoping he was going to be OK.

Joe, one of our papermen, felt for a pulse. Then he placed his ear on Basil’s chest. He looked at me and shook his head.

I turned around and crying behind me was the driver of the box truck, teetering on a leg that had left blood stains on his jeans.

“He pulled out in front of me! There’s nothing I could do,” he said through his tears.

“It wasn’t your fault,” I said. “I saw the whole thing.”

With no cellphones back then, I ran down the middle of the barren highway searching for a phone booth and found one a few blocks away. Police and first responders arrived in minutes. Basil was pronounced dead at the scene.

Through the years that have since past, my memory of this tragedy has helped form my attitude about this thing we call life.

Every time we step outside our homes and venture into any destination near or far, we face unknown dangers that can prevent our return to our loved ones and friends. To that effect, never leave home after an argument or after upsetting someone. Should we die in an accident, our family and friends will remember the last thing we did with them or said to them.

They shouldn’t have to keep in their hearts our anger or confrontation. The last thing they see from us should be a smile or a laugh. The last words they should hear from us should be ones of love and kindness.

I know it’s a cliché, but live each day like it’s the last one. Make the most of the moments we share with others, whether that be with a spouse, a child, a friend or the woman running the register at the dollar store.

Author Dani Shapiro wrote, “Years vanish. Months collapse. Time is like a tall building made of playing cards. It seems orderly until a strong gust of wind comes along and blows the whole thing skyward. Imagine it: an entire deck of cards soaring like a flock of birds.”

In that single gust of wind, we can be gone from this Earth forever. This is not a gloom and doom harbinger, but rather a gentle reminder to leave a good impression upon those we encounter today because it might be our final ones.

I do not know what Basil did or said to his wife in the hours before his death. I just hope they enjoyed each other’s company. Let us make it a point today to enjoy the company of those we love, not just for today, but for tomorrow and for forever, which would be however many minutes, days or years we are left with the privilege to still be alive.

Email Rich Strack at richiesadie11@gmail.com