Being melodramatic or reality?

I just got back from a visit with my parent's.

Visiting them these days is emotionally exhausting and sad and messes me up but I know it's really important that I do. And I need to keep doing it.

(BTW: They were both relieved to hear that I'm choosing to stay inactive vs. disassociating myself.)

Tonight's conversation in the car on the way home once again went down a dark road (that's been when he's dropped little bombs on me like when he said he'd shoot her before he put her in a nursing home!)  Tonight Pop was saying that he thinks my mother will be dying within the next couple of years. She won't last another 10-12 years.

I hope he's wrong. Yes, she's a bit down right now...discouraged by her recent and current bout of bursitis. She hasn't been swimming for I don't know how long and that is a big thing for her. But she's holding steady weight-wise and taking her medications...and recently said her blood sugar has gone down significantly so I don't believe that she will be checking out in the next couple of years.

Yet, my mother herself has recently stated that she is spending so much time on her poems and writing because that's what she'll leave behind when she's gone.

So WTF?

I don't know what to think. I don't know if this is them both being melodramatic or it's reality and I'm just in denial...BIG time.

They're both larger than life personalities. People are drawn to them ...their wit, their humor, their love of life and their intelligence. Watching them both fall apart in various ways (Mom physically and emotionally and Pop emotionally) is the hardest thing I've ever had to do so far. 

You know what? I need to have a chat with my brother. Find out what the fuck is going on over there. The whole point of him living with them is to help take care of her, of them. (And while I'm at it, I should ask him how he is doing and coping with all of this.)

While I am off living my life, here is a big part of it that I don't pay attention to very well and now I am feeling so...helpless. Yet I'm also feeling selfish and wishing I didn't have to worry about any of this. I want to live in the times of my mind where my parents are in their 40's (or their 50's) and we were nowhere near having to deal with any of this.

How do people do this?

How do they cope? I know I need to accept that things are changing and will keep changing and I will have to face the realities of their aging and maybe eventual deaths. I guess that is just another part of being a grown up isn't it?

And it fucking sucks.