The Utah mayor who was killed in Afghanistan over the weekend while serving with the state’s National Guard had one final wish for “everyone back home.”

“As the USA gets ready to vote in our own election [Tuesday], I hope everyone back home exercises their precious right to vote,” wrote Army Maj. Brent Taylor in a Facebook post last week, just days before his death.

“And that whether the Republicans or the Democrats win, that we all remember that we have far more as Americans that unites us than divides us,” he said. “‘United we stand, divided we fall.’ God Bless America.”

Taylor, a married father of seven, praised the Afghan people for taking part in the country’s first parliamentary elections in eight years on Oct. 20 — and urged Americans to follow suit on Tuesday.

“It was beautiful to see over 4 million Afghan men and women brave threats and deadly attacks to vote,” he said. “The strong turnout, despite the attacks and challenges, was a success for the long-suffering people of Afghanistan and for the cause of human freedom. I am proud of the brave Afghan and US soldiers I serve with. Many American, NATO allies, and Afghan troops have died to make moments like this possible; for example, my dear friend Lieutenant Kefayatullah who was killed fighting the Taliban the day before voting began.”

An Afghan pilot who served with Taylor sent his family a letter this week, memorializing him.

“Tell [his children] that their father was a loving, caring and compassionate man whose life was not just meaningful, it was inspirational,” wrote Maj. Abdul Rahman Rahmani. “He died on our soil but he died for the success of freedom and democracy in both of our countries.”

Rahmani told the Deseret News that even though he only knew Taylor for a short time, the North Ogden mayor taught him a very important lesson about life.

“Family is not something,” Rahmani recalled him saying. “It is everything.”

Taylor was killed on Saturday during an insider attack in Kabul. His remains are expected to arrive in the US on Tuesday.