An unfortunate obsession

I've become a little obsessed with death lately.

More than usual, I mean. Because of course, right, how could someone who works with dying people and reads books about dead people not have some level of deep-seeded predilection towards the topic?

Lately, though, I've been getting these sudden, brief bursts of anxiety about it. Worrying about M. dying, worrying about my mother dying, worrying about me dying. My grandmother's unexpected (aside from the fact that she was 88) death when I was in the sixth grade led to my first foray into therapy to help combat the panic attacks and morbid obsessions that developed soon thereafter, but since then I've been largely cured of my afflictions. Feel free to relate this to Paragraph B and discuss.

So why the recent relapse? Part of it is probably my work catching up with me, or maybe even my grandmother catching up with me. Part of it is probably growing older and having valve replacements and multiple PVCs become part of my everyday family lexicon. But I've given it a lot of thought, and what strikes me as the most likely culprit is Good Old Love.

I'm scared of death because I'm in love. (I'm also scared to death because I'm in love, but that is for another entry). Now that I have found M., found the person I want to spend my life with, have kids with, grow old with, I'm scared of losing him. I think I read somewhere that this an unfortunate but well-known fact about falling in love - - allowing yourself to love someone means, ultimately, allowing yourself to lose someone.

Last night I invited M. downstairs for a couple of post-work beers, and ended up launching into an urgent and angst-filled diatribe about how he needs to stop smoking so that he won't get cancer or heart disease or lung disease and die on me. Needless to say, it was a buzz-kill, and what started out as a relaxing opportunity for post-work Family Time imbibement turned into an intense and awkwardly silent ten minutes as we slowly finished the dregs of our lukewarm Bud Lites. An hour of Dancing with the Stars helped to restore the good humor in our household - Rachel Hunter, hollah - but the dark cloud lingered, sprinkling us both with quiet reminders of pushy smoking-cessation boyfriends and stubborn pro-tobacco boyfriends and the certain knowledge that death is just around the corner for each and every one of us.

So what's the answer? Will I spend the rest of my life worrying about M. dying? Is it just an unfortunate, unavoidable side effect of monogamy? Or do these feelings subside over time, replaced by the tentative self-reassurance that 'tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all? More importantly, is anyone up for a Bud Lite? And a cigarette?