Imagine each of the bodies used to be a living, breathing human. Each soldier there had a childhood, memories, they had felt things and smelled things, and seen things. Everything in these soldier’s lives led up to their deaths. Their existence could be neatly summed up with an age and a name, and forgotten so easily, as if they had never existed or even mattered in the first place. They knew serving carried risk of harm to life and limb, they weighed the consequences and their incredible bravery led them into battle, but they could never know the finality of death, that the whole of their physical and mental being would cease as a function. They may have lay awake at night in fear of meeting their maker, or had reservations as they first signed their name on the piece of paper that made them a soldier, but none of them knew this was their fate. How could they? Just recently they would have been smiling, and jovial. They would have been conversing and emoting and looking in one another’s eyes to derive meaning from visual and auditory cues. Not so long ago they would have been exquisite examples of a living, breathing organism. But as the synapses in their brain shut down, and the activity between neurons turns to excess heat instead of prolonging sustained consciousness, they are nothing more then shells of living creatures. If you’ve seen someone die, you know it can happen quickly, and it’s hard to comprehend the full implication of a life coming to an end. From the observer’s point of view its just another event, it may bring on emotions and feelings, but as far as the universe is concerned its just energy moving around. We may be born to die, and that’s depressing as hell, but each one of us is a unique tapestry of history, memories and personalities, and as long as we are alive we continue growing with complexity and weaving ourselves further into the shared history of our earth, our galaxy, our sun, and everything that had a part in making us. That being said, remember that each one of the soldiers strewn about the beach by the careless throws of death and pushed up the sand by the unforgiving current was a truly irreparable loss. Remember that no one person’s life is worth more then another, and that the loss of anyone, anywhere, for any reason is a tragedy and we must all share in the pain.

Barry Delaney and his best friend Kevin Elliott made a pact; that Delaney would wear a dress – the brighter, the better – if Elliott was killed in a action. Private Elliott died Aug 2009 the victim of a Taliban ambush in Afghanistan. Delaney kept his word at the funeral

Zanjeer the dog saved thousands of lives during Mumbai serial blasts in March 1993 by detecting more than 3,329 kgs of the explosive RDX, 600 detonators, 249 hand grenades and 6406 rounds of live ammunition. He was buried with full honors in 2000

Reality of divorce. Found in 7 year old school bag

Man saying goodbye to his dog before she was put to sleep

19 year old Madison Holleran’s final Instagram post – uploaded just an hour before she took her own life

Daughter reaches for Dad

24 year-old Marine Sgt. Tyler Ziegel and and 21 year-old Renée Kline on their wedding day. She divorced him a year later. He died last year of a combination of drugs and alcohol.

Iranian man gives the peace sign before execution. Hanged in public in November 2014, 36-year-old Nader Haghighat Naseri had one message to those observing the execution in Mashhad, Iran: peace and victory. Naseri was a member of an armed group which engaged in several episodes of armed robbery, and was convicted of Moharebeh, or waging war against God.

An elephant beside the corpse of a friend, with her trunk around the deceased elephant’s tusk

A little girl protected by the embrace of her dead father was the last survivor pulled out of the rubble of collapsed multi-storey buildings in China

Average age for getting “into the life” is 12

Player craddles 9 year old in his arms seconds after he was fatally struck during a baseball game

A 5 year old’s last drawing before dying of cancer

One Last Ride

Marine spends one last night with his best friend after his plane ticket was donated to get him there