Isn’t it amazing how quickly your mind can take you down the rabbit hole that
something is wrong?
Uncertainty had triggered my habit of worrying and now I was inside the
mental “What-if Loop”: Did grandma die? Did I do something wrong? Is he in financial
trouble? It must be me, what did I do?
Did you catch what happened? The uncertainty triggered my habit of worrying.
In less than five seconds, I had convinced myself that my grandmother had died,
that I had done something severely wrong, that my father was deeply disappointed
in me, or that I was about to get in major trouble.
I heard the back door open and him walking toward the kitchen. He picked up
the phone and was as nonchalant as could be, “Hey Mel, thanks for calling, where are you
right now?”
I was freaking out on the other end of the line.
“I’m in Miami on my way to the airport, your text scared me to death, did I do something
wrong?”
He chuckled and said, “No, it’s not about you, Mel. It’s about me. I didn’t want to tell
you and your brother until I was sure.”
I almost dropped the phone. “Are you gonna die? Oh my god, you have cancer.”
He interrupted, “Will you let me talk...I don’t have cancer. I have an aneurism and I
need open brain surgery to remove it before it kills me.”
He went on to explain the whole story. He had had a bout of vertigo and
collapsed while he was playing a round of golf. That lead to an MRI, which
revealed this aneurism. They found it by mistake. He was having surgery at the end
of the week at the University of Michigan.
I sat frozen on the other side of the phone. My father-in-law had died from
esophageal cancer. Within seconds of hearing my dad’s story, I immediately thought