Life’s too short to spend it worrying about when it’s going to come to an end

I woke up every day, for nearly a year, afraid that I was going to die. It didn’t occur to me until the other day, when I was helping my wife and my niece dry off our 15-year-old poodle, Mochi, after he’d fallen in the water fountain in our backyard, trying to get a sip of water, we assume, that I should have been spending that time thinking about how great it is to be alive.

I had a blood clot that turned into a pulmonary embolism back in 2021. I’d had the PE for about a month, I later realized, based on the symptoms – fatigue, lots of coughing, which I’d interpreted to be a cold that just wasn’t going away.

I didn’t figure it was more because I was able to work out each day, able to otherwise function mostly normally.

It didn’t come to me right away after my one night in the hospital that I hadn’t been actually near death.

I mean, if I’d waited another few days, maybe.

For months after the PE, every muscle twitch in my left calf, where the first blood clot originated, then broke away and traveled to my lungs, was an existential threat.

I lived in fear of my own body.

What was going on here was, my lifelong struggles with severe anxiety, which I had been able to mostly suppress, were taking over.

From the basics of, I’m going to die on that long road trip to the beach, my life became, I’m going to die in my sleep because my body is turning against me.

It was an excruciating year, to say the least.

The good from this was getting into therapy and learning more about myself through that process than I probably would have ever known.

The revelation about how the anxiety wasn’t all that bad a thing came post-therapy, but I don’t know that it comes to me without the therapy experience.

I don’t know now that it would have ever sunk in for me how great it is to be alive until I thought about that awful year when I woke up every day thinking I was going to die.

That’s a powerful self-revelation.

It’s becoming more an issue for me with the end days for Mochi, who is nine months into renal failure that has had his clock ticking from Day 1.

What I see out of Mochi every day has me thinking back to my tough 2021 with a fresh set of eyes.

That little puppy dog probably knows that something is up, that he doesn’t quite have the pep in his step that he used to, but just the same, he jumps at the gate when it’s time for breakfast or dinner, or a treat, and he’ll sometime miss when he tries to jump on the couch, but he still tries.

We’re near a point with Mochi where a tough decision will have to be made.

But I don’t sense it coming just yet.

What I’m learning from watching Mochi each day is, I want to be excited about food, about running around out in the backyard, barking with excitement at anything and everything, until it’s time to transition to whatever’s next.

I don’t want to spend another day thinking that I’m going to die.

There are too many water fountains, and only so many Mochis.