Nothing�s quite going according to plan today�or maybe it is. Although I�m 45 and I joke about being middle-aged, I rarely feel middle-aged. I may be a little creakier than I used to be and goodness knows that my features are re-settling. Like all good things from Wisconsin, too many of them want to go south with age. Mentally, as the annoying children�s song goes, �I�m alive, awake, alert, enthusiastic,� and I expect to be for quite a while more. No, what�s hitting me today is the mortality of the generation above me.

There�s been three funerals of parents of people I know within the last two weeks (although I have not made it to all of them.) I can no longer assume, relatively safely, that my children�s friends have living grandparents. Perhaps it�s been happening for a while but until my final living grandparent died a year ago, I didn�t really think about it. Sure, my dad has breast cancer but he�s done so well that, after the initial crisis, I think I lulled myself into a false sense of security. I recognize that my parents are getting older and my mind recognizes their mortality but my heart hasn�t followed�until this morning.

This morning I got an e-mail from Dad that his little sister has a tumor. His little sister is the aunt who taught me about curling hair and who, on a dare when I was an adult and should have known better than to be motivated by dares, got me to pierce my ears at the same time she did hers (although I made her go first so she couldn�t chicken out.) Her husband, whom I love deeply, has been living with metastasized lung cancer for a bit. I knew the doctor had found something on her lung but I also knew that he initially believed it was left over from the several bouts of pneumonia she�s had.

It hit me hard although I know that a tumor alone is not a death sentence. It hit me as I realized that having parents is something that people my age can count on less and less. Of those friends who are not orphans, many are beginning to view parents as people to be taken care of and not people who take care of you. There have been times I�ve taken care of my parents (or Mr. Philately�s) but, to date, they have been brief and, in the case of my parents, have been followed by periods in which the roles have reversed again.

At 45, I know that I can manage without my parents. I like and value having their advice. They are two of my closest friends. Mr. Philately jokes that for me, reality doesn�t feel real until I dissect it with my mother (or, in a pinch, with a sibling) and there�s a large truth to that quip.

So, things are not going according to plan today�at least not according to my plan. When I step back I know that they are going according to the larger plan of the universe. Today is just a day when I think that plan stinks.

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