Yes, we are all aging. Time keeps ticking away. I am just lucky that I have been blessed with a long lived family. 3 of my grandparents lived to well over 100. That is my ambition as well and the grandkids had better not get within range of my cane or risk getting one up side their heads.
I had a lot of time to spend with my dad this trip. We agreed that each minor memory loss (the 4th item on the grocery list, the reason for the trip down to the basement, etc.) gets you wondering if this is the beginning of the end down the road to addlepation. We commiserated on how easy it was to squat down to pull weeds and how hard it is getting back up. My dad eats lunch with a bunch of old guys every Thursday, and every now and again, their number gets smaller by one. We weighed our desire to get a discount against the tacit admission that we were older than dirt.
It was just a couple of days, but I came to an even greater appreciation of the old guy than I had before. Amazing how much smarter parents get as you get older and I suddenly realized how blessed I was to still have both my parents as I enter my own dotage. Like Joni Mitchell reminded us in the early 70's. Don't it always seem to go that you don't know what you've got till it's gone.
Once again, a really enjoyable experience was tempered by sad news. Dennis Brush, another Reitz Class of 1967 graduate, who had been in bad health when we first contacted him before the Cottonwood reunion, succumbed to his various health issues this past week. I have placed his obit and a recent photo on the class website.
If you've still got them, give your folks a call just to say hello.
