so, like

 I have this one cousin who's a bit older than me (late 40s maybe?) and I've always considered her kind of my "weird" cousin, and though we know each other we haven't been together in person for many years because she lives in (you guessed it) Florida.

Her son, whom I've never met (aside from, possibly, as babies) just dropped dead the other day. He complained of severe pain in his upper back and neck, enough to warrant a trip to the ER, but the doctors didn't see anything immediately wrong. They said it looked like he'd torn a muscle in his back, prescribed ibuprofen, and sent him home.

Hours later, he complained of dizziness, lost consciousness, and died shortly thereafter. He would be 24 on the 18th of this month.

There is a bit of a scary condition lurking around in my genetic background-- a predisposition for acute aortic dissection. In short, the largest blood vessel in your body bulges and suddenly bursts, and you bleed to death before you make it out the door. His mother, my cousin, has had two surgeries already relating to this condition (and our common grandfather was revealed unexpectedly to have a bulging vessel, also surgically treated), but it was not known that her son was affected until it was much too late.

I feel like this winter season has just been studded with reminder after reminder that we are intensely, frighteningly fragile specimens of life.