You know that whole "No news is good news" thing?

Yeah well, that's been my family of late. If I don't hear from anyone, things are going well. When I do, it's because something's gone wrong. Talked to my younger sister last night for the first time in like a week or so and she gave me some news that definitely wasn't good. She had gotten a letter from my mom yesterday and my mom gave her news about our dad. My dad, at this point in time, is not able to my in our lives physically. Neither is my mom. They are both in places that severely limits their freedom and for good reason. They are also both very limited in their activities and it is this, I believe, that brought on my father's current issues. From what the letter said, my dad had a stroke about six weeks ago which would have been just after Natalie and I got here. The letter also says that he's fine but my understanding is that strokes do tend to have some affect on the brain afterward and again, it is a stroke, not something to take lightly. Course, now writing this, I'm hit with another thought, strokes were what eventually killed my mom's step-dad when he was in his 80's. And now, thinking even more, now that my dad has had a stroke, with my younger sister's issues with both pregnancy and being on the pill (and the fact that she spent all of the LAST pregnancy on baby aspirin), she probably needs to look at what HER health concerns are, this may be something genetic.

So yeah, definitely some concerns there which naturally has John concerned about me. I told him a long time ago that it was doubtful that I would outlive him or if I did, it wouldn't be long because people in my family, compared to his, just didn't live that long! We're usually killed off by something major before the age of 70.

So yeah, I'm a little worried right now. Kind of worried about my dad and definitely worried about my mom because her health isn't that great and my sister too. And having had that happened, it reminds me that at some point, we're going to start losing family members and that's not something I look forward to. I mean, it's been awhile since we've had an actual death of a long term family member in MY family. Spouses have been a different story, John has lost most of his half-sisters now and even a nephew, my younger sister's husband has lost family members recently, and my sister's first husband's family has lost members but OUR family, other than my sister's baby, has had a death in almost 20 years. That's a LONG time. We've been really blessed as far as that goes but I fear that that's not going to last much longer. My family is getting old and with age comes death.