Our team has begun dealing with the loss of Valeria Reyes, the young woman we adopted through the Friends of Jaclyn program.

Valeria died yesterday at age 12, four and a half years after being diagnosed with a brain tumor.

Among the things we discussed yesterday at our team meeting was the way you chose to live your life. Valeria received only 12 years. No one knows why she received only that amount of time. And no one knows exactly how many years they will receive. Whatever the amount, you make a decision on the quality and direction of those years:

Will you live for yourself or for others?

Will you live with a common or uncommon purpose?

Will you do things well or not as well as you can?

All these are conscious choices, and at the end, life is the sum of these choices.

One of our players expressed admiration for Denis Murphy, who founded Friends of Jaclyn when his daughter Jaclyn was diagnosed with a brain tunor.

We noted that in life, you cannot chose what happens to you, but you can always choose your response. When faced with an insidious disease in his family, Murphy decided to widen his family. He founded a group that links sports teams to children with brain tumors, with the aim of enhancing — and extending — the life of those children.

As Washington Irving said, “Great minds have purposes, little minds have wishes.”