Missed

I’ve never died before so now I am hyper alert to anything that changes,
like a soreness in the throat that wasn’t there yesterday, or a sudden
drop in energy or in blood pressure, all of which occurred during this
past week.

It isn’t that I am overcome with fear, but that I immediately think of
issues like tasks that now would not be done in a timely fashion, and
other problems that my death would create, mainly problems for
Karen, my wife.

Sometimes I roll my eyes at myself for the silliness of some of these
thoughts which, of course, are occurring only now that I am very old,
not remembering that old or young, things happen to our bodies
besides death,

and that this preoccupation with death is neither helpful nor sensible,
and is especially a pain in the ass for Karen, who is fairly sensitive to
the hills and valleys of my medical situation without my irrational
additions,

but this is a once-in-a-lifetime event for me, so I plead for a cutting of
slack for this seemingly neurotic fixation (are fixations neurotic by
definition, in which case I apologize for the redundancy) which I’m
thinking is only natural

in that, as I said, I never died before and this will be not only a signal
event but a final one for me, although of less ultimate consequence
than another drop in the ocean or microbe in my body, but for a while
I will be missed I’ll bet.

There I go again.