When my father was 40 years old and I was 16, he was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer that killed him 14 months later. Two years earlier he was working on his third novel and had moved our family to a real house in a neighborhood with trees. He thought that his every dream of was now in reach. He was wrong.

My kid brother told me that our grandfather said our family was born under a dark star. I wasn't sure what that meant exactly but when I heard it I somehow knew it might be true and the idea has haunted me my whole life.

My mom's father died on the operating table during an elective bypass. He had dragged his family out of war zones and immigrated first to Cuba, then America, deftly sidestepping fascism and communism with every transcontinental move. My grandmother died a few years later, not long after she started hiding her own feces in the top drawer of her elegant cherry dresser. My mother developed dementia when she was about 60 and died nine years later, biting at her blanket like a rabid dog.  My paternal grandfather died of a heart attack. He was a smoker so his particular demise doesn't scare me. But my young and beautiful father, dead at 41? Terrifying.

Having witnessed this familial parade of death it has always been difficult to visualize myself as an old person. Signing up for a 30 year mortgage or contemplating where I might live after I retire always seemed like ridiculous hubris, a luxury of forethought afforded only to people from sturdy stock. I wanted to be one of those people. I always have. When I catch up with old classmates, these days more than likely, on Facebook, I am grindingly jealous when they tell me their parents are still going strong in their 70s and 80s. I'm not proud of that reaction, by the way. I'm just being honest.

So I do what I can to be healthy. I don't smoke or drink (but neither did my father). The only "flesh food" I eat is fish. I don't love to exercise but I try to get a half hour on the treadmill most days, and then pull on some weights. I take vitamins when I remember to. This whole "dark star" theory has affected me in different ways. When I was newly married and we stepped across the threshold of our first house, I was hit by a wave of anxiety and nausea as I thought of my father's face when he held up the keys to our new house. He was filled with such joy and optimism, and look where it got him. 

Later, in my 30s, I became a virtuoso hypochondriac. Every itch and twinge was a symptom of cancer or worse. I once convinced myself I had Lou Gehrig's disease. I didn't. My doctor insisted I start Prozac and the hypochondria soon disappeared.

But I believe that my overarching response to my sense of impending doom is this: I live with a kind of restless disatisfaction, a sense that time is running out and there is much to do (even when I can't quite articulate exactly what needs to be done.) Since the jury's still out on reincarnation, I seem to be trying to inhabit as many different identities as I can while I'm still here. I've lived as a married soccer mom and a tattooed lesbian. I have started five different nonprofit organizations, all successful, but never joined the staff of any of them. I have had a husband for 20 years and a now a wife for almost five. I've been self-employed, and I've worked for the biggest firms in country. I have been blonde, I've been dark-headed. I've had long flowing hair and I've had a faux hawk. I've lived in stately suburban homes and tiny bungalows in scrappy neighborhoods. I won't exactly say that I'm a carpe diem type --I'm too sad and neurotic for that-- but I'm seem to be seizing something. I'm just not sure what it is yet.