A really weird thing happened to me this week that I haven't had to deal with before. In fact, I'm accustomed to the exact opposite, which is what has made it so disconcerting. My entire life I have listened to people tell me how young my parents look. My dad has gone with me when I was preaching somewhere and the people thought he was the preacher and I was his teenage son. He's also been mistaken many times for my brother. Don't get me started on my mother. She has gone with me when I've preached and been mistaken for my sister and even my wife, almost never as my mother. When people learn they are my parents the reaction is predictable. "There's no way. They look too young to have a son your age. They look like your siblings, not your parents." Honestly, I can't disagree with them. My parents do look young, very young. I, however, was not blessed with this fountain of youth DNA. I have commented many times that in just a few years I will actually look older than my own parents. They look young because they are young. Whereas most of my peers have parents knocking on 70's door, my parents are still a good ways from 60. They were 16 and 17 respectively when I was born. I am currently older than my parents were when I got married. Their first grandson came when they were just age 35.
I come from a long line of young parents. I was, my dad was, and my grandfather was a teenager when our first son was born (eight more months and my oldest will break they cycle, fingers crossed). When I graduated high school, my grandfather was a couple of years younger than my best friends father. That is how young my parents are. I'm used to their youth, but that changed this week.
Sure I've noticed the little changes that indicate my parents are aging, but in the last week they informed me of some health problems they have, nothing terrible, just normal parts of aging. Aging. I realized for the first time in my life this week that my parents are aging. Slower than most, probably, but they are aging. I have witnessed many people, my mother and father included, having to take care of their aging parents, but it never really occurred to me that one day I will have to care for mine. I don't say this out of dread, but enlightenment. It just dawned on me that this day is coming. I had never thought about it before, but it is coming. It's difficult for me to think of them as elderly, which they're not, but they will be one day, and this week opened my eyes to that. I only have one living grandparent (who is pretty young herself considering I'm nearly forty and she's still a little ways from 80), which means, when she passes, my parents will be the older generation. When I was a kid I had great-grandparents, and they were old. When my sons have children (which technically they are both old enough to biologically have a child now), I will be a grandfather and my mom and dad will be great-grandparents. That is crazy! I guess we can all say it's too late to die young now.
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