Julia Lived to Be 91, Which Makes Me Feel Better

Dear friends, it's been lovely, truly it has, but I fear this is the end. I could quite possibly be approaching my death.

I only have months now, weeks or days even, before the morning comes that Nathan will think I am simply being stubborn and won't get up from bed. He'll say, "V, seriously, are you still in bed?" I won't even stir. "Well, give me a kiss goodbye then." Nothing. He'll shake me. Call my name out loud. Check my pulse. Panic. Regroup. Call an ambulance and have me rushed to the emergency room. The doctors will puzzle and agonize; how could a seemingly healthy 28-year-old have suddenly passed away like this? How did her arteries come to be like stone?

This is the scenario I play out in my mind as I drink my morning tea, watching Diane Sawyer interview someone about the hazards of too much salt in one's diet. The hazard of it hidden in processed foods especially, since we have no control over what has already been added. The levels of sodium in, say, a hot dog? Much more than our daily recommended value, which should be no more than a half teaspoon.

Wait, a half a teaspoon? That's it? Commence hyperventilation.

An animated graphic pops onto the TV screen of an artery being slowly thickened and hardened over time as the little white dots that represent "sodium" pile onto the screen. This is about where I turn off the TV and begin to accept my fate.

Until that moment, I had been preoccupied with trying to curb my butter intake, which would undoubtedly warrant the same kind of animated artery graphic warning if Diane Sawyer knew what I was up to. Me, and Paula Deen, The Butterton Family (have you seen those commercials?), the entire staff of Kitchen Conservatory in St. Louis (motto: "It's better with butter") and the late Julia Child. We'd all be condemned to watch the artery clip over and over.

But I'd have made up my mind long ago; sacrificing it all for flavor. Nathan would tell people, "She loved life. She lived life. She never took life with a grain of salt... always with butter and usually with more than a half a teaspoon of salt."