I met Mark on a recent trip to Ireland.

Our conversation started while boarding a flight from Chicago to Dublin. Noticing that we would be fellow seatmates, he asked to settle the ever-important debate surrounding the etiquette of seat dividers. That was brought to closure rather quickly–aside from a spouse or significant other, we both agreed that dividers in the upright position are never construed as offensive.

Mark proudly announced that he and his wife spent $20,000 on a pair of business class tickets a few days before. Being quite puzzled myself about the financial detriment of their poor planning, he seemed completely unfazed by the whole thing. They were embarking on a weekslong tour across Europe to reconnect with old friends.

It turns out that Mark will die in six months if all goes well.

His future comes with an unmovable deadline. Money was no longer important. And neither was travel for the sake of travel. What mattered was time with friends and family, those simple moments of human touch that bring joy and laughter, and sometimes sadness.

Interestingly, our academic backgrounds were quite similar. He graduated with a computer science degree in the late 1970’s, though oddly enough, spent most of his career in covert operations. For a brief moment, we geeked out about programming languages and the state of computing many decades ago. His wife could not be bothered. He also claims to be a friend of Vint Cerf, widely considered to be one of the founding Fathers of the Internet.

When Mark mentioned that he was dying, I felt an overwhelming sense of sadness and an urge to convey sorrow. However, he was anything but sad. Rather, he had a skip in his step and was eager to get on with his tour in Europe. Our encounter was serendipitous for sure. There was a message in his joyfulness, an important reminder of being present in life and attaching value to the things that really matter.

Mark spent 40 years building his coffers for retirement, planning to travel the world with all the money he had amassed. But life dealt him a sobering and nonnegotiable hand less than one year into retirement. Time lost can never be recovered.

I saw Mark one last time after exiting passport control in Dublin. He mentioned that his body was in great pain due to cabin pressure changes during flight, making it difficult to breath. But despite the physical suffering, he smiled and carried on with life, wishing me pleasant times in Ireland.