l'chaim to life

i have a married friend who used to comment about how she thought how much more awful it is for someone with children to pass away young than for an unattached person to have an untimely death. needless to say this thought didnt go over well with me. i believe that every person's life is equally important and there is no issue of one person's life being more valuable because they were lucky enough to have had a spouse and children. perhaps if the single and childless one had lived longer they may have had a spouse and a child. furthermore, the one who dies young who has been married has gotten the opportunity to have a spouse. the one who dies young with children has had children. im not invalidating the fact that someone who passes away and leaves small children behind does not leave many suffering. all i want to say is dont do the freakin' comparisons. all scenarios are sad. and of course i do have a friend who did die young and did leave behind a husband and young children. and yes i do think this is most sad, i just dont think that its not as sad for someone to die young without ever having gotten married, without having a child, without having great love in their life. someone single may have touched others greatly through other venues , through friendship, tzadakah,chesed, and being there for one's family. when we speak of the holocaust we dont say "well six million died , but two million were single, so it was really only a great loss of four million jews" chas v'shalom!
i had a friend years ago who had told me she wouldnt have gotten health insurance unless she had children. i remember being horrified with her attitude . i remember asking her why she wouldnt have thought it important to obtain health insurance just for herself? why wasnt she important? and what would she have done had something dreadful happened to her and she had needed health insurance, but didnt have it? what then ?
i have elderly relatives who have never married , and they dont have kids. i am who i am today because of them . and i dont mean that i am single because of them. i mean that i am who i am because they have added so much to my life. they didnt have kids, so they were there for me. i have a great aunt who passed away when was three who i to this day remember . she never had a biological child to remember her, but all these years later i remember her and how much fun i had playing with her. no one knows how many lives have been touched by one seemingly simple individual.
every life is important and valuable . every life that leaves this world is an equal loss, because once they pass away the world is a different place. we all are important and we all have the ability to make this world a better place. who are we to be so cavalier as to decide whose life is more important? who are we to play g-d?