Life is short and in those moments when that reality hits hard humans can have a range of reactions.

A few weeks ago I had that happen to me twice. My reaction was to sign up to walk the Wings of Karen 5K Bra Dash.

Let me rewind a bit.

On Father’s Day, June 17, while we were getting ready to have dinner at my in-law’s house in Bellevue the phone rang. It was a family friend, Steve Montgomery, who called to let my husband’s parents know his wife Mary had died.

Everything came to a screeching halt. Mary was 63 years old. She and Steve had been married nearly 44 years. Jason, my husband, had been in Boy Scouts with her sons and I had known the Montgomery family since I was 17 years old, not long after my husband and I began dating.

It was sudden. She had fallen, broken her leg and had surgery to repair it a couple of days earlier. Things went south quickly, though, and Mary was gone. I didn’t think we would be saying goodbye that weekend.

This was a moment I realized life is short. I thought about all the times we had spent at Steve and Mary’s house for dinners, Pampered Chef parties, New Year’s Eve celebrations, or the evening in December 2009 when our dear friend met my daughter Lyla for the first time.

Mary has been surrounded by boys her whole life. She had an older brother. She was the mother of two sons and was blessed with three grandsons.

Like Mary, my mother in law had two sons, and when I got pregnant I know she secretly hoped we had a girl even though whatever happened she would love her first grandchild like crazy.

When we found out we were having a girl I think Mary was nearly as excited as Gale, my husband’s mom, and I have proof.

That night when Lyla was about three weeks old it was warm and cozy in the Montgomery home. Christmas was around the corner and you could feel the joy of the season inside those walls.

Mary sit in a chair in the living room just gazing at Lyla and gently asking her to open her eyes so she could her baby blues. Once my little girl did wake up, Mary told her several times that she was a little princess.

I remember thinking to myself in that moment how glad I was Jason was at work. He was determined not to raise a princess, I think because he didn’t want a spoiled child with an overdeveloped sense of entitlement who would want to wear poofy dresses, tiaras, and have over the top birthday parties which would require a large cash layout on our part.

Still, there was no way I would stop Mary from enjoying that moment with Lyla, because I thought of her as family. I had always planned for my daughter to call her Grandma Mary.

But, life is short, and that isn’t going to happen. Jason and I miss her terribly. We can’t imagine how hard it is for her husband, her family, her kids, her grandsons whom she adored and all her friends, especially my mother in law, who counter Mary as one of her closest friends.

While we dealt with the shock of Mary’s death the best way we knew how, a few days later life dealt Jason and I a tough blow at home when our beagle, Lucy, was diagnosed with lymphoma June 21.

Six weeks after we moved into our house in Maple Valley we adopted Lucy, who was 5 at the time, from Seattle Beagle Rescue. I’d never had a dog as a kid because I grew up in apartments. We’d had a couple of cats but they were my mom’s pets not mine.

Lucy was my first dog. And we had to make the decision to end her suffering. Now I know this is an experience people go through every day all over the civilized world but it was new for me. And it felt like life kicked me while I was down.

We have another beagle, Langdon, who is 8. A few days after we put Lucy down I realized I hadn’t walked those dogs in months. A wave of guilt swept over me and I resolved that I would give him more attention than I had since Lyla started walking 18 months ago.

To that end I went out and bought some new sneakers as well as a few items of workout gear so I could walk Langdon.

I went to lunch with my friend Ilyse, who is a breast cancer survivor, around the same time. She asked me about my health and I told her my plan to walk more with the dog as well as my reasoning.

“How’s that going,” Ilyse asked.

I hadn’t started yet. Later, while we ate, she told me if she could run an 8K at the end of July I could walk one.

That afternoon I went home and walked Langdon around my neighborhood, a route just short of a mile, with not much of a plan as to how I would keep it up other than I would just try to keep doing it. Jason and Lyla came along which was fun.

The next morning I got up and took Langdon out again. Then we walked after work the following day.

In that first week we went out five days straight. I though maybe I could do a 5K walk at some point this year. I had been pondering the idea ever since Ilyse ran the Mercer Island Half Marathon little more than a year after her diagnosis.

Runner I am not, but she’s right, I could do a walk.

At the end of the first week I decided to sign up Wings of Karen 5K Bra Dash as a walker. I knew about the event thanks to the article TJ Martinell recently wrote about the Maple Valley-based organization.

It’s Sept. 9, the day after my 34th birthday, and two months away. I figured I could easily get to the 3.1 mile distance well before the walk. And anything that supports breast cancer research is a good event in my book.

I signed up July 5. I knew if I didn’t do it while I was determined to then I never would. And once I signed up I would be committed thus would train seriously for it.

All that being said I am surprised at my reaction to these moments I’ve had recently where that realization life is short has hit me hard. Sure, my dog lived about 13 years and we loved her to bits, she had as good a life with us as a furry companion could ask for and maybe other people would be satisfied if a friend lived to 63 years, nine months.

For me, that’s not enough. Turning 30 didn’t freak me out. My dad died three weeks shy of his 47th birthday. Therefore my goal is to get old. Don’t complain about getting old around me. I look forward to it. I’m a Type 2 diabetic. I aspire to get old.

But if I don’t get my act together and take care of myself I won’t get to enjoy getting old.

So, I’m not going to sit around and mope, I’m getting my butt off the couch and walking my dog to train for a 5K.

Life is too short to not do this. For Mary. For Lucy. For Ilyse. For my daughter. For my friends and family. Most of all, for myself.

Maybe it wasn’t such a strange reaction after all.