A night for thought

Well it has been an interesting night at work tonight. But before I can explain it I need to do a quick back story.

The town we live in has a real bad stretch of highway running into and out of town. It is so bad that there have been6 fatalities in the last week of March on this road. 46 if you want to count the 40 sheep. 5 of the accidents were from passing in a double yellow zone, in a hilly section. Head-ons. I'm sure my Sacramento readers have seen it on the news. All the accidents on Highway 12.

Well the most recent accident was on Sat. morning around 6:00AM. A guy was passing at the base of a railroad bridge. He was .17 BAC. The limit in Ca. is .08. The BAC was taken 3 hours AFTER the accident. It took that long to cut the driver out of the car. He survived. He also had cocaine in his system and 1.5 pounds of crank (meth) in his back seat. Cops found 2 more pounds of crank at his residence. Along with several thousand dollars. He was doing approximately 95 when he went head on with another guy. Killed him.

Well tonight I found out that the guy that died was the next door neighbor to a guy that I work with. The guy was the same age as me. Had a wife and 5 kids ages 3-12. He was on his way to work to work some overtime to pay for a trip with his family. The sad thing is that the guy from work was telling me is this. Having 5 kids a wife and a mortgage life insurance was the last thing o his priorities list due to finances. So his wife is now dealing with the loss of her husband but also the threat of losing her house as he was the sole provider of the family.

I commented to the coworker that I'm in the same situation. Life insurance is not at the top of my list of things to spend money on. So he proceeded to lecture me for a good 15 minutes about all the reasons that I need life insurance.

So after I'm done talking with him I'm driving down the levee roads to my next destination and I start to have an anxiety attack. First one since I have been taking my meds. (Which I have been very poor about taking lately since my schedule change.) I was thinking about the fact that this guy was the same age as me. 33 years old and now he's dead. Just like that. No warnings or anything. then I started thinking about what would happen to Summer if I were to die tomorrow. Happy thoughts right? Then it hit me. My chest got tight and I had a hard time breathing. My vision blurred a little bit. I was listening to this song on the radio by Green Day. The faster the song got the tighter my chest got. It was really weird. It lasted for a few minutes. Then went away.

So here's my question to no one in particular- How do you choose a life insurance company? How do you determine what type to get? Life or term? What does that mean? How do you determine how much is necessary? Am I over reacting? Tell me! I need to know! It's 1 AM. I should be in bed right now!