Thoughts on fears almost forgotten

I decided to break out my iPod on the subway today, tuning into the podcast NPR Driveway Moments. I don't know how long this particular radio story had been languishing on my iPod, but I am glad that I finally got around to it. It's long, almost 25 minutes I think, but completely engaging.

The host asks him whether he was afraid of dying, and while he did say that he really did not want to leave this life, he said that he wasn't afraid. All of the things that people worry about when they think about death--feeling pain, being alone, being afraid--he said that he didn't occupy himself with those thoughts.

I found myself thinking a lot about my father and about when he was sick a few years ago. There is a world of difference between how Gottlieb feels confronting the possibility of death, and how I felt confronting the possibility of my father's death. Thankfully, in the end, he was fine, and he's healthy and strong as an ox today. But at the time, all I felt was pure, unfiltered terror. We knew that something was wrong, but no doctor seemed to be able to tell us exactly what it was. But the options that they threw around, like lung cancer, were terrifying.

Maybe it's always different for the ones who face the prospect of being left behind. My father, with his very strong personality and just with his presence, he's always been at the center of things. I could not imagine how we could begin to function without him. Any time that I allowed myself to think to the future, my imagination would shut down. It was unimaginable. And with every test they did, trying to diagnose, it felt like I was walking on thin ice. I was always afraid that the next step I took--the next test they did--would be the one where it all fell apart.

I wonder if this sounds selfish. In the middle of drafting this entry, my laptop completely crashed and I considered the possibility that it was a sign, that I shouldn't write this entry because it's too self-absorbed. I'm going to stop here.