Tommy had gone for the morning to spent time at extra hour hockey. Lauren was with her mom. Jennifer was at one end of the couch. I was at the other. Drinking coffee, we were both immersed in our own little activities, when I checked my email, and, through a succession of efforts, came to learn that a long time friend of mine had a heart attack on Christmas Eve.
I’d been forwarded an email message thread by Steve, from Kim, telling us that Brent had been in hospitalized on Christmas Eve. That original email didn't contain a good deal of information, so I sent a an email to Kim as a follow up, as well as a direct text message to Brent to convey my concerns and support for his well-being. Brent called me a few moments later and relayed to us that he had suffered a heart attack, had three stent devices put into his arteries, was told he was diabetic, and they were still working through resolving some issues with an abnormally high red blood cell count.
Brent is my age. He's what I would consider reasonably healthy, as I consider myself to be. Not ideal but not in utter disrepair either. He said that he would have never imagined he would ever experience a heart attack. Neither would I, and yet, it's all I can think about now.
Brent is an awesome guy. He's a brother from another mother. He is smart, well read, well spoken, and has what one might call a "rapier wit”. There have been more than one occasions in conversations where Brent has made some hilarious comment that almost knocked me off my chair.
We are not the best of friends, but we could well be under different circumstances, had we prioritized doing so. And this news made me realize I've been missing out on a good opportunity to.
I'm terrified of dying, as anybody who reads my writings knows well, but even more so of dying suddenly. Although I think it would be a lot Less traumatic and emotionally excruciating for me to go quickly, I'm in no hurry to prove that, and I certainly would not want to go what what I consider to be a young age. Brent's age. My age. Yeah, I still consider myself young, Brent too. At least, too young and too healthy to die or even experience a heart attack.
Yet, it happened.
I don't need any additional inspiration or reason to be even more obsessed about my own mortality than I already am. I'm obsessed to a fault that anything can happen at any time, and just might. Like this did for my friend.
What I want to take away from this is the wake-up call to reassess my own health and behaviors. I am already taking the initiative to get into my doctors simply to get a long-overdue physical and to discuss what other ways I can best monitor my own risks and mitigations. These actions were taken literally within 1 hour of that call, starting this ball rolling. I talked to their offices today about getting in there in January. It's time for a head-to-tail examination. It's time for preventative care. It's time to make a more concerted effort, upfront, to get out from behind any preventable obstacles that might be waiting for me on the road ahead.
It’s also time to make more of an effort to connect with the friends I have and the friendships I can further foster. Covid seems to have driven us into isolated pods. Yet even through a quarantine, I have been able to catch up with folks on a phone call or a zoom video. I can FaceTime while doing busy work and virtually hanging out. I even want to try the ‘watch together’ options that have become the new ‘thing’ in streaming video services. These are all options I’ve utilized to some degree, but not fully. I’ll be making a broader effort to do so now. Because it’s about time that I do so.