"This is my last attempt to gain control". Those were the last words my friend ever wrote, and they would change my life forever. Martineau was my best friend, my confidante; and it came as quite the malicious surprise when he didn't get better. We didn't understand it, Martin was always a sickly kid — he always had that pale greenish skin combined with a boney figure that evoked feeling of sympathy — but this, this was different. What seemed like a nasty case of flu ended up with him lying rather gravely in a hospital bed, surrounded by a colorful expanse of flowers and cards wishing him to “get well soon” and that he'll “be back in shape by May”. But the truth was, we had no idea what to expect. His illness was undefined, had no name. Test after test was conducted, yet it still loomed over us ever mysterious. The doctors could only theorize what was wrong and what would happen. I was seven when we met, fourteen when he first got sick, and fifteen when he died. It was late November, he was given a week to spend at home with his family for Thanksgiving. It was at this moment that Martin made up his mind. For once in his life, he would make the decision, he refused to let some unknown illness take his life. It would be under his own accord. I now realize that all Martin ever wanted was to have control in his life. His mother, a terribly high-strung and capricious woman, parented him with the iron fist that she was raised with. No one would blame her of course, she merely wanted her son to continue the legacy of their family's honor. The feeling of not being able to choose killed Martin, not his family or the illness. I remember exactly where I was when his sister called me. I had never understood what people meant when they said their life flashed before their eyes. But now I did. Martin's death made me understand what it meant to recalibrate, his death made me realize how unexpected life could be, and that to continue living the way I had would be a disservice to myself. The day that he killed himself, he wrote a letter to the each of us in the group, Elizabeth, Caroline, Nicholas, and I. That letter is my prized possession, something I value above all else. They are his parting words to me, his farewell. His letter changed the way I live. It opened my eyes to so much in life: the unexpectedness, the unfairness. When he first died, I was angry. Angry at a world who could make someone so young be consumed by an illness. Angry at the doctors, unable to find a cure. At most angry at myself, unable to stop this mysterious disease, this demon with no name from taking away someone who I loved. In the end I realized there was no bringing him back, and no one to blame. His death matured me in a way only death can — it enlightened me. One has to live like it is their last day, Carpe Diem.