Proceed at Your Own Risk

Capricorn. Petite. Foodie. Yogi.

These are a few of the handful of words I scan for in life—looking for those that pertain to me. Similarly, there are medical buzzwords that put my brain on high alert:

Skin cancer. High cholesterol. Knee pain.

Using my family history as a cheat sheet, I scan magazines and newspapers—even conversations with friends—like a human version of Google. Looking for those, I need to sit up and pay attention because of my family disease history.

Last week, I hear a story that saddens me, but doesn’t activate the “personalize” feature in my brain. A 48 year-old woman, the aunt of my son’s schoolmate who was visiting town from a few hours away, drove to pick up sandwiches for her brother and his family. She had a brain aneurysm and dropped dead among strangers.

I listen to this story in true horror. So many images crowd the mental slideshow that I immediately assemble. The other patrons at the store abandoning their shopping baskets to come to her aid. The paramedics rushing with purpose through the parking lot. The police officer who tenderly finds his way through her purse, looking for a driver’s license to turn his Jane Doe into a real person, then using her cell phone to push-button the worst phone call it has ever transmitted. Her children beginning a lifelong association of a weekend away with “never coming back.”

Only thing is, after I shudder at these thoughts, I move on. The word aneurysm lets me wedge a generous slice of separation between me and her. I don’t personalize this. It’s simply not one of my key words.

But, slowly over the past few days, it occurs to me: does this perceived lack of risk actually put me at risk? When we only think about familiar perils, do we miss the point? That death doesn’t necessarily line up its victims neatly by cause, using family history as its greatest organizing principle? Certainly not. The whole nature of death is random, untimely, unforeseen—an ambush.

This feeling sits with me, taking up residence like a cat in my lap. It reminds me of a similar realization I had 15 years ago when my husband and I survived a serious fire in our condo complex. One Tuesday night I went to bed, only to be awoken an hour later by my husband who had heard the building alarm and ushered me (and my coat and house keys—bless his organized little heart) out the door and through the smoky halls to the stairwell.

Prior to this experience, I thought firemen were only sent out on calls a few times a year.