We measure a life wrong, I’ve decided, out there on the gravel with the light going gold.

We measure it by the things that show — the money made, the titles held, the children who carry your name forward, the monuments with your dates on them.

And by that measure my life is nearly blank: I made a carrier’s wage, I held no title but Rural Carrier, I leave no children, and the only thing with my name on it will be the modest stone Virgil’s already waiting under.

By that measure I amounted to very little.

But I have come to believe that measure is a lie, or at least a poverty, a way of counting that misses everything that matters most, the same blindness as the spreadsheet that couldn’t see Emmitt.

Because there is another way to weigh a life, and it is this: how many people, because you existed, were less alone?