a "profound response to the limits and uncertainties of existence"

I guess that's why I'm agnostic. Not that I was raised in a very religious family to start with, but I became agnostic a few years after my father's death.

Losing a parent at an early age is a life altering event. I'm already older than my father ever lived to be. It's a sobering thought. Dad never got to see me graduate from high school or college, to meet my wife and stepsons, or to see them grow up to be parents this year.

His death (and my own coming within 1 second of dying in an accident a few months later) dispelled any teenage invulnerability I might've felt. Bad things happen, and they can happen to me just as easily as the next guy. Life is uncertain, so I try to make the most of it.