my cat got hit by a car and i had a meltdown

That's Mia rolling in the dirt in the garden. We rescued her from the SPCA about a month or so ago. After a week of adjustment she fit in with our little family just fine. She was even filling her duty by killing mice for me on a daily basis. In an old house a mouser is a necessity.
On thursday night i came home from work to find her dead on the road. It was horrible and terrifying and, well, bad. I picked her up off the road and laid her in the grass. I went inside and had a little, loud freakout which involved a some screaming and cursing. The kids were at their dads. Once i calmed down a bit my freakout escalated as i didn't know what to do with her body. It was midnight, or later and i clearly couldn't go out and bury her at that time of night.
I paced around nervously, envisioning raccoons and all sorts of other critters dragging her off. Finally, i gathered my nerve again – because picking up bloody dead things is freaky – and went out and wrapped her in a towel and put her up on top of the picnic table.
In the morning i returned and buried her, which was it's own nightmare. But, i did it and i told the kids who took it pretty well, Except for little Eliza who is still quite sad.
I spent the rest of the weekend thinking about the fragility of life and the randomness of it and the other part of it. Those little feelings, premonitions that we get all the time. As i was leaving for work on thursday i thought about Mia being outside and shrugged it off thinking she'd be fine. Now i feel like it was a little premonition that laziness or whatever let me ignore.
On the other hand, do we have these thoughts all the time and it is only when something bad happens that they become significant or remembered?