What’s your greatest fear?

We had an (ahem) interesting day yesterday.  LightGirl had a very negative reaction to some meds she’d begun taking.  I won’t go into the details of it here, but we ended up in the ER just to make sure she was okay.  As the meds metabolized she was alright, but we had a frightening couple of hours.  She will not be taking those meds anymore.  She has a pattern of strange responses to medication and I think we need to be more careful about introducing it to her system (but that’s another story).

The whole situation highlighted for me how frightening it is when I cannot take care of the people I love.  I’m not one of those moms who ran around wiping every drippy nose or making the house spotless or anything like that.  But it’s important to me that my peeps are happy and healthy.  When there are circumstances in their lives that are beyond anyone’s control and certainly beyond my control, it really freaks me out.  So … I guess I have two greatest fears; they vie for first place depending on the day, sometimes there are three.

One is that I will die before my children reach adulthood and can stand on their own.  It’s important to me that I see the LightChildren through to their own two feet.  I’d also like know their children.

Another is some sort of apocalyptic event that would separate us from our extended family in New England … they would die or we would die or we couldn’t get to them or something like that.

A third is that one of the LightChildren will die or become severely maimed before reaching adulthood.  As I watched LightGirl in the ER yesterday and contemplated the what-ifs of her situation, I was horrified.  My mind could only dance around the fringes and waltz away to hope.  We were extremely fortunate that the incident indeed appears to have been caused by the meds and she was back to her normal self by evening.

So what about you, what is/are your greatest fear?