My family, though mostly undistinguished, are world-class leaders in one realm — worrying. And among the generations of worriers, I’m an all-time standout.

It’s nothing I learned or practiced or somehow acquired. Instead, while all other babies are born crying, I hit the light of day with my tiny face scrunched in a frown, and I was suffused with a fear that something, somewhere was gonna go wrong and there wasn’t a thing I could do about it. I can’t remember a time when I didn’t feel like that, even in my supposedly-idyllic pre-K days.

And it never got better.

Here’s a perfect example: My bestie Kookie and I stay in frequent touch — no fewer than three times a week — and we’ve been doing it for at least 30 years. If I haven’t heard from her for a few days, I’ll call her in the morning. If I don’t hear back, I’ll call in the afternoon. And the same usually goes for her. But much to my chagrin, last week that pattern changed drastically, when I hadn’t heard from her for four straight days.

Of course I thought something was wrong — really wrong. I called her landline, but she didn’t answer, which was bad news for me because she has no voicemail.

And who in 2024 doesn’t have voicemail? The answer’s obvious — Kookie, that’s who.

And why doesn’t she have voicemail? The answer to that is far more abstract — so abstract that while she’s explained it to me at least a dozen times, I still have no idea what she’s talking about.

From what I gathered, when you leave a message on voicemail, you also leave a part of your psychic essence from one of your higher chakras. It’s a a very ancient and esoteric concept (at least according to Kookie), as set down in the Tibetan Book of the Dead or the Bhagavad Gita or one of those old crusty tomes. As I said, this is only from what I’ve managed to infer, because quite honestly, none of it makes a jot of sense to me.

Anyhow, as a result of all that, if she’s not home, she’s not in touch.

She could be in touch, because she also has a cellphone. But it’s always turned off, for another set of incomprehensible reasons based on the timeless wisdom of the ancients.

So last week, after I called her that first time, in the morning, I called again that afternoon. And again that evening. And all with the same results. Or if you prefer, the same non-results. Then I did what was the most reasonable thing for me — I went into a panic. She’d never done this before, and I couldn’t imagine why she was doing it now.

I came up with several logical possibilities — at least logical to a chronic worrier.

One was, even though our last interaction was as friendly and fun as ever, for some reason I couldn’t fathom, she now hated my guts.

Another was in the course of her dabbling with all that Far Eastern and far out mysticism and magick stuff, she’d ascended to a state of non-being. I’ve read about those things happening in such reputable sources as Reincarnation Self-Taught and The Case of the Vanishing Mystics. It seems that those enlightened souls, having mastered all the spiritual evolution possible in this world, have simply willed themselves into a higher psychic plane … and took their bodies with them when they did.

Or another possibility was she’d had it with Western civilization and the Northeast’s winters, and had hied off to some cozy tropical hideaway deep in the Amazon or Borneo, or some other haven of heat, humidity and fungus infections, where she could sit around in a sarong and meditate in perfect peace and comfort.

–

Fever and fear

–

But no matter what the reality was, after an entire week of not hearing from her, I was worried sick. Then I wasn’t just worried sick — I was sick, as I got nailed with COVID.

At first I didn’t even know I was sick. I felt OK, just had a tickle in my throat, a sniffle or two, and felt a wee bit tired. That was Day One.

Day Two: All hell broke loose. I was exhausted, sweating, nauseous, and ached everywhere — including in my beard hairs and toenails. I coughed convulsively, hacking up great gouts of something the size, color and consistency of egg yolks. But as I lay there, seemingly on the brink of You-Know-What, did I think of my impending doom? I did not. Instead, I could only think of my pal Kookie, hoping she was OK, and terrified she wasn’t.

So you might ask if I was so worried about her, did I think she might’ve been worried about me? Nope, not for one silly nanosecond.

See, completely unlike me, Kookie don’t worry ’bout nuthin. What with all her study and practice of those philosophies, she’s much like those dreadlocked Sadhu fellows you see in National Geographic. You know the ones — sitting on the banks of the Ganges, their only possessions a bowl, a walking stick, and a dozen chillums. And there they are, beatific smiles on their faces, placidly staring into The Beyond ,Beyond the Beyond or the like. Like them, Kookie doesn’t just go with the flow — Kookie is the flow.

–

If I make it through December

–

All this was apparent when after I’d recovered, she dropped in for a visit, as upbeat and cheery as ever.

Honestly, I was more than a bit miffed. I mean, there I’d been, on death’s door, a ghastly apparition, but thinking only of her welfare. And at the same time I knew she was skipping about in the woods, gathering leaves to make a Samhein-themed garland for her hair. I couldn’t keep my resentment to myself, and told her about my bout with COVID.

“Since we weren’t in touch, didn’t you think maybe, just maybe, something had happened to me?” I said.

“No, not really,” she said. “Besides, it wouldn’t have really mattered.”

“Not to you, maybe,” I said.

“And, ultimately,” she said, “not to you either.”

“Oh?” I said. “How do ya figure that?

“It’s simple,” she said. “Either you were healthy, or you weren’t, right?”

I agreed.

“If you were healthy, there was nothing to worry about.”

“But if I wasn’t healthy?” I said.

“Still nothing to worry about,” she said. “See, if you were sick, there were only two possible outcomes. One, you’d get better, and that’d be fine. Or you’d get worse, and that’d be fine too.”

“Even if I croaked?” I snapped.

“Even then,” she said.

“Just how do you figure that?” I snapped.

“Oh, for a bunch of reasons,” she said breezily.

She then counted them off on her fingers.

“One, all your earthly pain and trials would be over. Two, while I’m not sure if there’s an afterlife, if there is, I know you’d be there and you’d be having a fine time. And three, in what would seem like seconds, I’d be there too, and we’d be hanging out again.”

“And if there isn’t an afterlife?” I said.

“Also fine,” she said. “You’d be back where we all started — a zillion molecules floating hither, thither and yon through the cosmos.”

“For your information,” I said, “I like my all molecules just where and how they are.”

She shrugged, obviously not deigning to even acknowledge such earthbound shortsightedness.

“Besides,” she said, “I knew you were fine.”

“Yeah? I said. “Just how’d you know that?”

“Last week I checked your astrological chart. It was a waxing moon, Saturn is in the fifth house, and there’ll be a Neptune-Venus conjunction next month.”

“And what, in something resembling plain English, does that mean?” I said.

“It means no harm can befall you any sooner than early January,” she said.

“The hell!” I said. “So what’ll happen to me then?”

“Now, now,” she said, wagging an index finger at me, Old Schoolmarm style. “You know I can’t tell you that, or I’ll lose The Gift.”

I knew her long enough to know it was futile to argue with her.

“Besides,” she said, “January’s a long way off.”

“Yeah, it is,” I said, “… but only to you.”