There is a quiet kind of tragedy that doesn’t make the headlines.

You will not hear about it on the evening news, nor will you read about it in your morning newspaper.

You will not even locate it in the obituaries section on a funeral home’s website.

Why?

Well, because technically, she never really died.

She just never quite lived.

Hers was merely a life lived entirely in lowercase.

She worried too much about what everyone thought rather than how she felt or what she wanted.

And in time … she forgot she mattered.

She forgot how to live.

She forgot how to love.

She never remembered how she mattered to God.

She never remembered how she mattered to her mother.

Or how her children felt about her.

She lived her life entirely in lowercase.

And it never even made the headlines.

I met her once.

This soul who was afraid of dying.

Not in the flesh … but afraid of dying … inside.

So, she refrained from taking chances.

She wore caution like a cardigan, buttoned up all the way.

Her dreams were folded neatly in the drawer, pressed, but never worn.

She was the kind of person who read the safety instructions twice.

She was the kind of person who never swam past the rope.

The kind of person who never traveled great distances because “you just never know.”

And she was right — you never do.

But in her quest to avoid the fall, she missed the flight.

She lived her life in lowercase.

Not out of meekness, but out of habit.

Hers was a life wasted sitting in her seat whenever the music started to play.

Hers was the kind of life that always turned a maybe into a not today.

A life which turned someday into never.

Small choices eventually add up.

She blinked.

And suddenly she realized the calendar did all of the living for her.

Life is not obligated to knock twice.

It was as if she was waiting for permission to live in anything but lowercase.

Or waiting for someone to tell her she is allowed to try a punctuation mark, a capital letter.

But that kind of permission will never come, for there is no such form for anyone to stamp, telling you it is going to be OK.

And if you are waiting until you feel brave?

Well, understand that courage only shows up after the first step.

If you are telling yourself you are just not that type of person … ask yourself who wrote that sentence.

And then ask why you keep reciting it.

There are days which demand a capital letter.

There are moments which insist on a comma, and in order to keep us honest, we sometimes need a well-placed period to breathe.

She lived her life in lowercase. And at the end of her story, she discovered she had missed out on all of the uppercase moments she should have written.

Fear is a very clever thief.

It doesn’t steal all at once.

First, it takes your spontaneity.

Then, it takes your laughter.

Fear then removes your ability to take chances and to say yes without having a spreadsheet in front of you.

Fear convinces you risks are reckless.

Fear tells you how joy is a luxury.

It softly whispers living fully is simply flirting with disaster.

But here’s the thing: The soul doesn’t measure one’s life in years.

It measures it in moments.

Like in the way your heart races when you are the first one to say “I love you.”

Like in the way your feet ache after you’ve danced too long in the wrong shoes.

And still, you wouldn’t change one song in the playlist.

Or in the way you cry during a movie you have seen at least a dozen times … because this time, this time it hits differently and effects you in a way you can’t explain.

A soul afraid of dying never learns to truly live.

It forces you to live in lowercase.

It mistakes survival for existence.

It builds a fortress so strong, not even wonder can get in.

And when the end finally does come — as it always does — she will realize far too late that it was never the dying she should have feared.

It was the not living.

So, if you’re reading this and are living your life in lowercase …

If you feel that cardigan suddenly tightening around your chest …

Take it off.

Start saying yes without that spreadsheet in front of you.

Eat the cake.

Stay up late.

Book the flight.

Buy the dress.

Get the sports car.

Make the call.

Tell the truth.

Dance badly.

Laugh loudly.

Love recklessly.

Put your name at the top of the page.

And don’t apologize for the size of the font.

Because the only thing worse than dying is understanding far too late that your heart stopped beating long ago … never having actually lived at all.

Hers was a life lived entirely in lowercase. And yes, lowercase is easier to read.

But it is also easier to forget.

Write something worth remembering … and be sure to write it before your story is finished.

(Stenger is the community editor of the Herald-Star and The Weirton Daily Times. She can be contacted at jstenger@heraldstaronline.com.)