Depressing thoughts (or why Google can be a bad thing)

Have you ever thought about -- really thought about -- what would happen to your kid(s) if you were to die young?

(I warned you this would be depressing ...)

It's something I've been thinking about for the last couple of days, and now I can't shake it. The "inspiration" behind these dark thoughts is that I found a weird (and painful) lump in my hip/leg area Monday night, and Bobby convinced me to have it checked out asap. I saw my doctor yesterday, who says it's just a swollen lymph node, probably due to some sort of infection, and prescribed antibiotics. Then I came home and googled various combinations of "swollen lymph node," "painful lymph node," or "lupus lymph node."

Bad idea.

Yes, there are tons of causes behind swollen, painful lymph nodes, including lupus, which I have. Most of these causes are innocent, unserious, and easily resolved. Most of them. In rare cases, swollen lymph nodes are symptomatic of cancer and other horrible things. I went to bed last night with worst-case scenarios invading my head. What if that sore in my mouth is really melanoma and it's spread to my lymph glands? What if I have ovarian cancer, the so-called silent killer due to its lack of symptoms? What if I've inherited my mother's breast cancer? What if my lupus is flaring in a major way all of a sudden?

What if I die? What if I don't get to raise my child?

Like a punch in the gut, this last question hits. It's one thing to be facing death at old age and be at peace about it, or struggling with it, or to just not care what happens. But I think having a young child takes this issue and blows it into an entirely different stratosphere. There's the selfish part of me that simply thinks, But I want to be around for Maggie's everything ... her first day of school, the S-E-X talk, her first date, graduation, college, marriage, children ... everything. But then I think about Maggie herself. What would it do to a child -- a daughter -- to lose her mother so young? The world is such a messed up place, and girls receive all sorts of wrong messages about where their worth lies and who they 'have' to be -- how does a daughter navigate childhood, adolescence, and the great beyond without a mother?

I hope I'm around for a long time. I hope Maggie comes to me for the sex talk, for advice about boys and friends and education and her appearance. I hope I can show her throughout the years that she is valuable not because she's beautiful or smart or popular, but because of who she is on the inside. That what matters is faith in God and the way she treats others. And most of all, that she is loved.

I think the thing I fear most about my own early demise (and believe it or not, I am thinking more rationally now than I have been the past 28 hours or so) is Maggie not knowing how much I love her. Will she remember how I gently tickle her at night to get her to fall asleep? Will she know that I still tiptoe into her room to watch her sleep and marvel at the miracle she is (and say a prayer of thanks every time)? Will she ever, ever have any clue how much I love her? I was sharing these thoughts with Bobby tonight (incidentally, I didn't feel any less of a freak during that conversation than I do now ... I just feel weird sharing such morbid thoughts, but there you go ...), and he told me not to worry, that if such a day ever came -- and he made sure to say that IT WON'T -- he wouldn't let Maggie forget. But it's one thing to hear "Your mother loved you so much" and another altogether to enjoy a lifetime of experiencing this love firsthand. Can anything ever take the place of a mother's love?

I take a bit of solace in knowing Maggie would still have a loving, devoted, hands-on father, two wonderful grandmothers, and a host of female friends and role models in her life. I'm lucky in this respect ... and, more importantly, so is she. But there is nothing like a mother's unconditional love; none of those people could make up for this void in her life.

And I guess I just have to stop thinking about it or I will really, truly, absolutely drive myself crazy ... certifiably, lock-me-up crazy.