Missing A Friend I Never Met It will be one week ago tomorrow that I turned the key in my car, triggering the power to my satellite radio (tuned to CNN), and heard the announcement from Tom Brokaw that Tim Russert had died.
I felt like I'd lost a friend.
My son sitting in the back seat asked who had died.
Even as I said I told him who Tim Russert was, I couldn't comprehend not ever seeing him moderate N-B-C's Meet The Press again.
I never met Tim Russert, but I could tell through his insightful on-air analysis this presidential primary season that he was smart, funny, and a voice you could trust. That's a combination that can be difficult to find anywhere these days.
In the week since then, so many of us have wondered how someone so talented, full of life, and on top of his profession, but seemingly all aspects of his life, could be gone in just a moment.
His doctors and those who were with Tim the day he died say paramedics tried to shock his heart back into rhythm three times before he arrived at the hospital, but the defibrillation didn't work.
As the health reporter, I like to say I know just enough to scare you. So I hear the clinical aspects of Tim's death and I go through all of the scary things I've learned about heart disease: half of all people who have one die before getting to a hospital. A heart attack is the first symptom of heart disease in the majority of people who have one.
These are all statistics well documented on the American Heart Association and other health web sites.
But until it actually happens to someone like Tim Russert, you tend push it out of your mind. Now, for many of us, that is impossible.
He's left behind a son just starting his adult life, and a wife. He's left behind a career most of us can only dream of. And to hear it told, he was one of those people who approached each day with a positive, can-do attitude.
So while we wonder, and maybe even miss, a person we've never met, maybe we can also learn from Tim Russert's life. Learn more about how to face each day with a positive attitude, learn more about our risk factors for disease and how we can manage those under our control. And ultimately, learn how to show the people around us that we care for them so that when we are gone, they will remember us even half as fondly as Tim Russert is being remembered. ¶ 11:45 AM