Your savings could disappear in an instant despite your most earnest efforts to save it wisely. A semi could cross the center line. A train could derail. A gunman could enter the school. A bomb could go off. A disease could strike. A tornado could appear. A flood could flash. Some days, my only consolation is the last smile or hug I got from Ava. If only the tragedy would take me and spare her, somehow. Otherwise, I don’t know what I’d do.
If you haven’t watched this yet, take 18 minutes and do it.
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1 Danny // Mar 11, 2009 at 9:36 am
I have moments like that all the time, and Tiffany doesn’t get it. I’m hard wired to the plan, and when the plan strays, if I’m not there to witness it, the infinite possibilities start crowding in. At least I’m also quite the pragmatist, so I don’t go calling hospitals and whatnot. I, like John Hodgman, or Ferdinand, just sit and wait quietly for Fate to come knocking.
How maudlin. Still, thanks for the link, Mark.
2 Nathan Pralle // Mar 11, 2009 at 10:29 am
Thoughts as such cross my mind almost daily as I do my regular work as a parent, ensuring that my mind is always atuned to the things that can hurt, maim, or kill my child and doing my best to avoid any of those.
If I stop to think about it and really contemplate his mortality, I freeze with the wash of anguish I can only glimpse in part; I try not to go down that path much because I prefer to revel in what is and not what could be, but it is ever there — lurking in the shadows, threatening to take my breath away in a painful blow and crush me into little more than nothing of what I am.
I do what I can because I must; that’s my job as a daddy. May I always be granted the foresight to jump ahead of anything that might intercept my child, because that is my worst fear — failing to see the preventable and doing something about it, for which I would never forgive myself.
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