What matters the most to you?

I got a call this morning.. a good friend of ours died in a climbing accident. He was 38 yrs old, had 3 amazing beautiful unschooled kids who we spent a lot of time with, and his passion was rock climbing. He was a devoted dad, his 3 kids played Magic with my two boys once a week and he came along and played with all of them, usually their kids would come home with us for a sleepover, I adored all three of them and so did my boys. We celebrated birthdays together, played lazer tag, he was the dad you always wanted to be there cause he was so full of life and joy.

He was beautiful and sweet and I loved to see him interact with the kids. He was playful and fun and his kids adored him! He was hard working, passionate, and he was at the happiest time of his life he recently told me. He also said that his wife was happier than he'd ever seen her, she was also living her passion, farming an acre of land for the coop community and her happiness was such a joy for him. It seemed their marriage was thriving, kids were thriving, they'd had some big struggles and seemed to overcome quite a lot, medically, financially, life and it's challenges in general and it was a really sweet time. He traveled all over the world and climbed, extreme climbs, he was very good, had a ton of experience and loved it. Recently he got frostbite on one of his toes and almost lost a toe, he got lucky. Apparently he'd had many close calls with death, but always prevailed. Until this morning, he went climbing, fell 80 feet and died. I cried curled up in ball for hours.. grieving for so much. His wife, their 3 kids who i truly love and feel so grateful to know, my own dad who died when i was 25, he was 48, all of the life I did not get to share with him, my marriage which looks more and more like it might be over, my kids who do not get much time with their dad who is so devoted to his career and life without kids, all the kids who do not seem like much of a priority to their dads, the kid in me who did not feel like much of a priority to my parents. So many tears, my body wracked with sobs, so much clearing emotionally and energetically, I feel kind of stunned and in shock now, empty and quiet.

The irony, today is my dad's birthday and my mom is celebrating 13 years of sobriety today.. just like life.. it is everything, death and birth and celebrating new life, totality..

So my friend's legacy to me is this.. as a wise one says.. the most important thing is to find out what the most important thing is.. what is most important? our careers? devoting ourselves to our spiritual path? achieving, accomplishing, acquiring stuff? devoting time and energy to our children? connection to our families? nurturing and nourishing our marriages? our relationships? self care? selfless service? realizing truth? self forgetting?

I'll be sitting in silence asking these questions..