Carpe Diem

My grandpa is in the hospital with a destroyed hip, and my grandma is one floor below him with pneumonia.

I sent them a card that Owen colored and stickered and some of Owen's artwork from preschool.

It's about the only thing I could think of to do to make them happy, but I get the feeling that they're kind of over cutesy grandkid/great-grandkid things.

The last time I saw them, they seemed kind of removed from Owen and Stew, as if they knew that they wouldn't be alive for much of their lives and didn't want to invest much more in them than polite inquiries.

I don't say this as a criticism of them- it's more that I am sad that two people who have been so important and influential in my life are just...done. Their lives aren't over but they are over life.

When they first became grandparents, they were involved with their grandkids closely. Their own years as parents probably felt as if they were yesterday and they helped with babysitting and nursing and doled out advice to the nervous new parents.

Now it seems they are looking on their stint as parents the wrong way through a telescope with everything very far away and out of focus. They are too unhealthy to babysit and too out of touch with parenthood to give advice. Those squirming little babies must just seem very very young to them.

And that's where we will be in fifty years. Give or take a few. Enjoy 'em while you got 'em, people.