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When did you first realize your parents had grown old? It's such a gradual thing that it really sneaks up on you.
For me it was when my mom meekly endured some bureaucratic altercation. She had always had a steel backbone and no reverse gear, somewhat like Thatcher, so watching her cave in like that was quite a shock to me. I realized that I no longer had a barrier troop that would not allow me to retreat in the face of adversity, all my courage now had to come from within. On the contrary, it was I who would have to look out for them from now on.
That's a tough one. My dad was always kind of a couch potato, and basically the only thing he ever really did was golf. If he wasn't golfing, he was on the couch drinking a Coors Light. In terms of activity level, he always seemed old. He had these gnarly scars across his belly from a car wreck he'd gotten in when he was younger, and he'd already has his gall bladder out from the accident before I was even born. He kept a roll of tums in every room of the house, the cars, and his golf bag. And generally he was always too tired to play with us from commuting 90+ minutes each way to work, starting at 5 am.
All that said, one year when I came home from college he seemed even more tired than usual, and rapidly graying. When I went back to college after that break, I had these incredibly vivid dreams about him dying.
Turns out he was in rapidly advancing liver failure. Inside two years he was dead. He was 56.
My wife is struggling with her parents getting older. They are both getting much further up there, into their late 60's and mid 70's. They've both had cancer, her dad has one kidney, and they are both experiencing cognitive decline, her mom a lot more than her dad, but still both. We try to have them play with their grandkids as much as possible, and my daughter loves her grandma. My wife's father suffers from a bit too much TDS for things to be comfortable when he comes over. Always tries to rub my face in something political, or diverts every conversation into how evil the Republicans are. The TDS has more or less completely coincided with his cognitive decline, and the more TDS he gets, the more he forgets simple things like what his grand daughter is allergic to, conversations he's had with my wife, etc.
That's not even TDS at that point, it's just plain rudeness. I'm sorry to hear your FIL acts like that, I can imagine it's tough.
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