The Cruelty of a Loss

In the fall of your senior year of high school, one of your closest friends lost his older brother Billy to brain cancer and he was 20 years old. You've said that the cruelty of his loss scared you terribly and put you in something of a nihilistic mood. How has that impacted the trajectory of your life? In the book, it's fictionalized slightly, though my buddy Timmy did lose his older brother to cancer. And we watched him deteriorate and die as we were basically turning 18 and it was really tough.