So some people might see it as ironic that in life, the ultimate distance event, Jack finished the race early. Just after his 50th birthday, he died of injuries received in a major highway accident caused by a drunken driver operating a car on a suspended license. Jack worked for a company in the World Trade Center and had survived the terrorist attacks because he was working off site for a client in New Jersey when they occurred. He was driving home from the location that had saved him 15 months earlier when he suffered the injuries that would claim his life two days later.

There is a special poignancy to the obituaries of people who eluded fate on September 11, then died soon afterward. A man who survived the terrorist attacks because he was late for work, then perished in the recent Staten Island ferry crash, was one of those who have made the rest of us ask: why, if he was given a reprieve, didn’t it last?

I understand too well the pain felt by the families of short-lived survivors of the terrorist attacks. Many endured hours of anguished uncertainty on September 11. Somehow it seems wrong that these families should have to suffer again.

But I’m not sure that “Why?” is the right question. To me, it makes more sense to ask how those who managed to survive the attacks spent their lives before–and during–their reprieve.

My brother lost so many co-workers that anyone would have understood if he had taken time off or changed jobs to avoid the searing memories. But Jack went back to work for his old firm almost as soon as his name appeared in the “Survivors” column on the company Web site. His actions may have had something to do with an idea that enabled him to excel as an athlete. Jack believed that sprinters needed a natural gift or a specific body type to do well, but that distance runners could succeed through will. Or, as some athletes like to say, “You can work on stamina and distance, but only God can make a sprinter.” Jack ran distance events because God didn’t make him a sprinter. He did what he had the ability to do. After the attacks, he kept doing it.

Few of us reach middle age without wondering how we might react if put to a similar test, and the question may be more than theoretical. As I write these words, two friends whom I have known for more than a quarter century are hoping that their breast and prostate cancers won’t recur. Every Christmas brings cards from friends who have lost family members. Their lives are shadowed by the presence of an absence.

After Jack’s death, I wondered what to say on my own Christmas cards, and decided to try to follow the advice that editors give to reporters: “Show, don’t tell.” I wanted to make my friends see who my brother was instead of their having to take my word for it. As I thought about how to do this, I kept remembering something that happened when Jack and my other brother, Bill, were teenagers.

We were living in a new house atop a small hill that iced over in winter, causing cars to get stuck. Bill was as strong and athletic as Jack. So every time they heard wheels spinning, signaling that another driver was stranded, they ran outside and pushed the car out of danger. They did this even when–as often happened when it snowed–cars got stuck several times a day. Nobody had to come to our door to ask for help because my brothers ran to their aid before they could knock.

When someone dies young, it can be difficult to find comfort in the memory of such good deeds. The kindnesses can make fate seem all the more capricious for taking the saints while sparing the scoundrels. But after many losses, I have come to agree with a rabbi who spoke at the funeral of a beautiful and gifted friend who died in her 30s. “Would you rather she had been less dear,” he asked, “so that you might grieve less?”

None of us would wish that we had loved our family members less so that we would feel less pain at their deaths. Nor would we wish that they had died sooner so that we could avoid terrible ironies later. So I try not to dwell on the imponderable question of why Jack died so soon after surviving the attacks on the World Trade Center, or when he still had so many races left to run. Instead I focus on what he did in the time he had. You may say “Think of how much more good he could have done if he had lived longer.” I would reply “Think of how much less good he could have done if he had died sooner.”