Life on a Thread

I had coffee with a good friend the other day but had not seen him in three months. He shocked me when he told me that he had almost died a day or two after our last meeting. He is only now getting back to normal and did not have a chance to tell me.
He came down with what he thought was a really bad flu, until the headache was almost killing him, at which point his wife drove him to the hospital. They took blood tests immediately and in very short order determined that he had a very serious E-coli infection which was already in his kidneys. If the infection would not kill him, perhaps the huge amounts of powerful anti-biotics would. It was a close call. And then he told me of a friend of his who got a paper cut that was hurting more than it should have, which turned out to be flesh eating disease. Only in the last few days have the surgeons stopped taking slabs out of him and think they have killed the last of the bacteria. He was so close to death that the doctors gave him only a 25% chance of surviving the disease, and the surgery.
Both stories revolve around bacteria that is ever present. We all have E-coli in our digestive tract, and we all have a form of flesh eating bacteria on our skin. We are all living on a thread and even the most innocuous of things can cause our death at any time. We cannot be debilitated with fear of these things, but instead must be ready to die at any time. Without dwelling on it, we must be fully aware that our lives are on a thread which can snap at any time.
Last week, my cousin who was only in his mid fifties died in his sleep from a massive heart attack. I did not know him at all, but wonder now if he was ready to die.
We must all be ready, because it will happen to each of us. No exceptions.