Aging is painful. It's painful in the joints, in the mind and in the heart. And it's especially painful when you have to watch those that are farther in the process get sick and eventually pass. This has been an especially hurtful week.

I have one of those day jobs that requires my phone stay in my purse during my shift, so the first thing I do when I get off work of course is check for messages. And I had one of those that we never want to get. You need to come immediately. Your father has had a stroke and is at Scripps in La Jolla and we have admitted your mother also. In a daze I walked back into my office and told my boss who told me to get my ass in the car and get to California and don't worry about the office. Text when I got there so he'd know I was safe. Bless the people who put family before company. I drove home making phone calls on the way. Packed a duffle and my guitar and headed on the road.

Those of us with a nomadic streak understand the solitude of cross country driving. We look for excuses to drive the wee hours to clear our head. Driving through the moonless night with my girlfriends texting me to comfort me and  keep me awake I pondered on what I was going to find when I got from Desert to Ocean. My father was not a big man but he was a very fit man. In his late 80s he was still going to the gym and giving Jack LaLanne a run for his money. My mother was another story. Diabetic, blind and mobile only as far as her walker could take her, she had dementia and my father was everything to her. It was a shock but not a surprise that the hospital admitted her for her own safekeeping because she can no longer take care of herself. I was driving straight into this and a sister I no longer knew and hadn't had contact with in over 10 years.

It was morning by the time I got to Scripps Green Hospital. The doctors really wanted to talk to both my sister and I together so we waited until late afternoon for her. I waited in the Chapel in memory and fear. Finally she arrived and we were able to find out how our parents were. 

The news wasn't good. They wouldn't know a prognosis for my father until he regained consciousness and Mom had to go somewhere as they couldn't keep her more than another night. In the week that ensued we had to work fast to move my mother to a nursing home, to figure out how to pay for everything,  to see that my father's last days were taking care of and my mother's future, too. My father never regained consciousness. There came a point where there was no more I could do. Someone had to take their cockatiel, so Bob came home to Arizona with me. For 8 hours he had the ride of his life screaming bloody murder in the shotgun seat of my Jeep and I'm sure thinking that his time had come. I got him home and settled just in time... Because in times like this the hits just keep coming. Because my beautiful dog who was getting on in years collapsed and died just a couple days later.

The theme song from M*A*S*H proclaims suicide is painless. I can tell you from experience that aging is hell.