The details are no longer important. How? Why? Where? None of it matters anymore. It’s all trivial. Only one important detail remains: the who. Ashley Softic died on October 28.

Who is Ashley Softic? To be perfectly honest, I can’t really say. I know very little about her. The obituary gives the basics. She was a student here with the rest of us. She was from Athol. She was 20. She worked at Rafter’s. Her car flipped after going over a guardrail on a Royalston highway, and she didn’t make it.

When it’s boiled down to raw nothingness like that, we miss it all. We miss the fact that Ashley had brothers that she went home to see play sports. We miss that Ashley had a family and friends that loved her. We miss that Ashley had plans and aspirations, just like each of us do. We miss it all, and we miss that at any time it could be one of us.

Ashley was in my journalism class. I didn’t know her. Much like thousands of others of students on this campus, she was just a passing face to me, that girl that dressed a little funky and who sat at the next table over during lecture. Yet when our professor relayed the news of her death to our class, I did feel a sense of loss. It may sound silly, but Ashley’s presence in the class of 12 was something I was used to. I saw her face twice a week, and its something I just got used to seeing. Now her chair is cold and empty on class days. No one else sits there. It’s another reminder not to take things for granted. Things change.

Nothing is ever certain, and sadly, that is the only certain thing. It could have been any of us on that high way, in that car, over that guardrail, out of that car, lying where Ashley lied. Ashley never saw it coming. No one did.

Death is all around us. It strikes at any time. We’ve felt that perhaps more this semester than at any other time in our lives. Death finds each and every one of us eventually, and not a one of us know the day and the hour at which it is at hand. That may sound morbid, but it is true.

So what do we do? We live our lives. We move on from all the death that each of us has seen in the last two months, but we do not forget it. Never ever forget it.

Each of us has a future to work towards. We don’t know if we’ve got fifty years or fifty minutes left to live, so we keep truckin’, giving this college thing a decent shake. At the same time, we get caught up with distractions. Parties, relationships, troubles that pop up back home – they all most likely detract from the way we’re doing in the classroom. They’re also all learning lessons, though, and perhaps we become stronger people as we cope with the assorted garbage that goes with these things.

We all tend to lose track of how good we really have it. Whether we’re struggling to pull a C in a chemistry class, working two jobs to scrape enough cash together to continue our education at this good ol’ university, or complaining about the way the opposite sex has been treating us, we’ve got to remember something: we’re giving it a shot, and that shot, those chances to succeed that we’ve all been granted here, is more than a lot of people ever get.

Sometimes it’s tough to keep perspective. Small things seem like the end of the world, and sad things seem unbearable. Every time that happens, we need to remember that things could be worse. Things can always be worse. A wise man once said something along the lines of, “All of the tough things in life that don’t kill us make us stronger.” He couldn’t have been more right.

Any day that we’re alive and kickin’ and giving life another go can’t be all bad. There are always things to be thankful for. Most of us here at this university are young, healthy, intelligent, and vibrant individuals. Whatever is plaguing us beyond those is in our control. We all have the ultimate responsibility of making ourselves happy and successful. That’s why we’re lucky. We’re in charge.

No one has the right to give up. Ever. Giving up is a cop out. There’s only one way to live life. Take nothing for granted. Live life to its fullest. Carpe diem, baby.