We are getting old.

Not to be morose but of late my extended family is aging and getting sicker.

I have an uncle in his 90s who is bedridden in a nursing home and can't really do anything but eat and when they prop him up in a chair he can sit for awhile.

My dad is 86 and OK but weak from trying to care for his wife who just had a hip-replacement. He's only able to spend about an hour a day with her at the hospital. She also is beginning to show some Alzheimers which is making things doubly hard on my dad.

One detail that makes this harder to accept is how very large my dad's family (all my aunts and uncles) used to be. There were 12 at one time all living. My grandmother died in 1970 and then one by one her children have died off leaving only 4 - my dad, his brother James mentioned above, an aunt Amy in her 90s and aunt Ida Mae in her late 70s or maybe early 80s. One of the saddest things is as each one died, hardly any of the the surviving brothers or sisters were able to attend the funerals.

I know that all this awaits my own children someday but I'd like to spare them the heartache, the hard work and whatever else goes along with growing old. But I know we'll do what we need to do and so will they.

And the world will spin around a few more times.