My husband and I , well behind the curve of your average primetime television viewer, only recently watched the conclusion of Lost, and while I have a great deal more to say about it than this, all I want to write about is my abruptly realized fear of dying. The thing most likely to get the tears flowing from me is fictional lovers parted, by death or otherwise. I missed a question on a test in college for having thrown Cold Mountain across the room but a few pages from the end, and I never watch the ending of Titanic or Moulin Rouge. Once is enough. Just knowing that they end the way they do is enough to set me sulking for the rest of whatever prospective day I've decided to torture myself.

It isn't that I don't believe in something after death, it's that I can't name it or describe it and I don't have the faith to follow those who claim that they can. Fragile, human doubt about what comes after is as real to me as the notion that these feelings must mean there's something more. I want to live with as much heart as possible because even if there's nothing once it stops beating, I won't know until it's too late to have done or said or dreamed. I don't want to make excuses - even though I do - because I know I have more to fear in regretting what I haven't done than anything I have or would.

It's just a television show, but what I wanted they couldn't show me. Life seems hard and little and mean, but at least I know what to expect.