Choking

What in the world am I doing here, awake at a time I'm normally barely dropping off to sleep?

Nearly dying, actually.

I woke up, for the sixth or eighth time in the last month, completely unable to breathe, my airway choked off in some sort of spasm that forced me awake. I sat up, once again trying to drag in air past a throat that was closed, and spending the next ten minutes coughing so hard I gave myself a headache, periodically emitting chunks of phlegm and slobber the size of a biscuit.

There was no going back to sleep until my throat calmed down, so rather than sit upright in a cold, dark bedroom, I figured I'd come down here to the bluish half-light of the iMac and tell you guys all about it.

I have suddenly become rather concerned about sudden death. Not the actual fact of it -- things have been bad enough lately that living and dying are starting to blur in their relative appeal -- but the logistics of it. One thing about being married, or even being in a serious relationship, is that you have someone who will know about it relatively immediately. They'll either be there, and unfortunately witness it, as I worried Nancy might if I screwed up and got wrapped around the PTO of the tractor one day, or will be notified relatively immediately and be on the scene to do something.

But these days, who would respond? Whose number in my wireless phone do I prepend with ICE? Should I put a sticker on my front door? When Marilyn and Donna at work circulate around asking for us to update our emergency contact information, whose name do I give them?

I don't know.

My first concern is the cats... my parents are too far away. If I was to die in my sleep, it might be two or three days before anyone even realizes I'm dead, and then what are my parents, four hundred miles away, supposed to do? What will the cats eat and drink (and poop in) in the interim? I sleep with the bedroom door closed, so it's not like they'd even be able to nibble on me while waiting for a recharge of the brown triangles.

I have no will. There's nobody to "leave" anything to, and by the time anything went through probate asking that the house be paid off (I have a truly gaudy amount of insurance through work, far more than is needed to pay this place off and take care of the taxes and the cats for the rest of their lives) the cats would be eating the wallpaper. So, I haven't gotten around to setting such a thing up.

But at the root of it is, I have nobody. There's really nothing like being close to one person, someone who knows what needs to be done and is in a position to do it. There hasn't been anyone here with me in nearly four years now, and nobody seriously in my life regardless of location for nearly a year. I felt like I could trust Penny, and Mary, and even Melody, to be that person who would have to get through the trauma of me dying and do what needs to be done, but they're all busy doing other things now.

My own fault. But as you know, I've been working on it. All of this, of course, is stuff you could never, ever tell someone early on after meeting them: "I want to be with you so that in case I choke to death in my sleep or fall asleep driving home and hit a tree, someone will be there for my cats."

So I just don't mention it, and instead couch it in terms like, "I want someone to share my life, and do things with."

Yeah.

That sounds convincing.

I just wish I could convince me.

I can breathe again, so I guess it's time to go back upstairs and attempt to sleep again.

In unrelated news, the spring has gone dry. I have 60 gallons of magic water left.