Life is made up of moments. Some big. Some not so big. Some seemingly small that just may turn big. And despite the big or not so big, some are moments that will affect you for years to come or perhaps your entire life. 

They can be obviously monumental moments — a marriage, divorce, birth of a child — moments where the stature of the moment is as big as the moment itself. 

But it doesn’t always unfold this way.

Looking back, my life has been just as defined by the seemingly inconsequential moments I didn’t see coming as the enormous ones I did.

Deciding on a whim to take a summer school driver’s training class and meeting a cute skinny guy who I’d later fall in love with and marry. 

Leaving a career for family and as a result developing a new writing career from home. 

Making a last minute decision to visit old friends at a lake that we’d never heard of turned from mundane to monumental when we discovered a cabin for sale on that lake and decided to give an offer, which was accepted. In the years since, we’ve rallied family memories.

These seemingly inconsequential events changed my life forever. In a good way.

Sometimes seemingly inconsequential events go the other way.  

A friend and I shared the love of gardening, among other things. Although he was younger than me, he was better at it. I didn’t mind; I just tried to learn from him. Ours wasn’t a friendship with competition. He was just like that. I didn’t appreciate it like I should have. 

He was a person beyond his years who made the most of each of his moments.

Last weekend he was outside in his yard doing what he loved — gardening. And sometime, somehow, he fell over or lied down on the earth and died. He was very, very young. 

Those of us who knew him and appreciated him sit back and wonder. How can a moment in time veer so far from where you thought it was going? Where it was supposed to go? 

I don’t know the answer. 

My last Facebook message earlier this week was to this friend. I was asking a question about some work we were doing together. It went unanswered. He never replied.

Because he was in his yard gardening — and in a moment of time his gardening here on earth ended, leaving those of us whose lives he touched, feeling sad, confused, heartbroken and even glad. Glad to have known him. Glad he was part of our lives. Glad to remember his infectious smile.

This young man touched many lives in the most positive of ways. He will be missed in many coming moments. His impact on the people he touched will continue. Those who knew him will see to that. RIP.

— Jill Pertler’s column Slices of Life appears regularly in the Times.