Yesterday, I returned home to heavy news. My wife told me her grandmother was just diagnosed with late-stage stomach cancer. It appears the illness has been there for over a year, yet remarkably, she has remained entirely free of pain throughout that time. My wife plans to return to her hometown for several months later this year to be by her side; I told her that was the right choice and that I would join them for a period as well.

Without realizing it, I am nearly thirty-five. I recently joked with my younger colleagues that I’ve officially crossed the “halfway point” of life. “I’m the elder now,” I told them. “You’re still young—keep working hard.”

On Monday, while scrolling through my feed, I learned that the former president of my undergraduate university had passed away. I remember him as a figure of immense influence during my college years. His words of encouragement echoed through many campus event. He was even the architect behind the school’s rebranding—changing our university English name from BUAA to the pinyin Beihang. Who would have thought that a man so vibrant and influential would be gone so soon? Then again, seventeen years have passed since I first stepped onto that campus. How many “seventeen-year” chapters does a person truly get? Especially the ones defined by the struggle and transformation of youth.

Not long before that, just as the pandemic restrictions were lifting, I lost a founding professor from my college department. He was a mentor who had looked after almost every graduate in my cohort; it was he who wrote my recommendation letter for my move to the States. During my first year in the U.S., I visited his daughter’s home in Austin. Later, during my summer internship, he visited the Bay Area, and we shared a meal at a Chinese restaurant. I always intended to visit him again once I returned to China. Now, that intention has become a permanent regret.

When I first started working in 2018, I spent a lot of time reading about mortality—books like When Breath Becomes Air and Being Mortal. While the specific details have faded, the feeling they left behind remains: a sense of stoic calm. Death is not a distant stranger. If a major illness strikes, one should accept it with grace. I often find myself asking: If I had only days left, what would I do? What if I had months? Or years?

In 2015, the news was about my maternal grandmother. I was in a department building late at night, grinding through a paper deadline. My mother called, her voice sounding frail and hollow. “Grandma is gone,” she said. I was stunned. I tried to comfort her, but the words felt inadequate. I later wrote a diary entry to commemorate the small, precious moments I shared with her. Because of visa issues at the time, I couldn’t go back home to say goodbye.

Earlier still, during my PhD, I heard about the passing of two high school classmates. They were a tragic pair—star-crossed lovers whose lives ended prematurely because of their complications with one another. The news was a shock. I had still been in touch with the young man on WeChat. It was a jarring reminder of how abruptly a life can vanish. During my first trip back to China after my PhD, I made a point to visit his grave in Shanghai to pay my respects.

My earliest brushes with death go back to 1999, when my paternal grandmother passed away. She was the one who raised me in the countryside. I was young then; I remember wearing the black-and-white mourning armband, crying, and keeping a night-long vigil with my cousins in our rural village before going to the funeral home. My parents told me she was “gone forever,” but at that age, I had no real concept of death. I simply thought she had moved to another place. Every year until I left for university at eighteen, I visited her grave. My parents taught me to “report” my annual progress to her—to tell her what I had achieved and to burn spirit money so we could send her “New Year’s money” from the beyond. They believed she was watching over her descendants.

Even further back, in 1997, my maternal grandfather passed. I understood very little then. I remember my mother taking me to the hospital with meals for him. When he died, I remember the hearse and my mother crying uncontrollably. I cried too, simply because she was, yet death remained an abstract shadow.

Life is moving so fast. My parents are still with me, but every time we reunite, I see the marks of age more clearly. Meanwhile, my own child was born, bringing daily joy into our home, but also bringing a profound sense of “destiny”—the feeling of the wheel turning, the cycle of life beginning anew.

When I was younger, I spent so much time pondering the “meaning of life” if we all end up in the same grave. Now, in the thick of middle age and the relentless pace of work, I’ve lost the luxury of that time for reflection. It took this quiet moment to finally put these thoughts into words.

Life is fragile and unpredictable. My only hope is to do something meaningful with the time I have. So that when I am old and looking back, I can press my hand to my heart and say: I have no regrets.