I'm going to bum you out now.

I hate aging.

I hate everything about it. Except the alternative, as the joke goes, except that aging leads to that alternative anyway so it doesn't exactly make it feel like an alternative.

My uncle is undergoing treatment for cancer and while he's doing really well (he has his good days and his bad days, of course), the situation is still pretty serious. He's not a young man and all his condition does is remind me that none of us are getting any younger.

He's my dad's oldest brother and his condition serves as this aching reminder, for me, of my dad's mortality. Of the undeniable fact that one day not only will I have to face a world that my dad no longer inhabits, but I will have to explain to Nate that Pop-Pop has left us... and that someday Daddy and I will also have to leave.

My god, thinking about having to have that talk makes my heart feel like it's shattering into hundreds of pieces. I would rather give the sex talk ten times a day to an angry teenager than the death talk once to a sad and possibly confused child... all while dealing with what will be my own massive grief.

I guess if this was one of those "Tell something about yourself that no knows" directives, my statement would be that no one knows that my biggest fear is my father's death and that I've feared this for as long as I can remember. (Except, I guess, there's a pool of you that know this now.) I won't get all shrinkazoid on you and theorize why this is my biggest fear, but I will point out that it sucks to obsessively fear something that you know is inevitable. If I don't outlive my father, that means I will pre-decease him, which is not exactly a sunny alternative.

It's a no-win situation. And I think about it far too much, always have. I don't have nightmares often, but I had some whoppers when I was pregnant and two of them involved my father dying. I woke up sobbing and gasping for breath each time. And now that I have Nate, my breath practically seizes when the thoughts come up again. Now my biggest fear would have to be losing Nate, but it's not the same. It's not inevitable. It'd be unnatural. I have to prepare for the fact that one day I will live in a world that my dad no longer does. And, really, when I word it like that my initial reaction is to say, "No. I don't want to."

My cousin emailed an incredibly sweet picture of my aunt and uncle today since we all have been asking how he's doing and I guess some people asked how he looked with no hair. Looking at the picture, I wouldn't even know he was undergoing treatment, which is great. He has light in his eyes and brightness in his skin. He doesn't even look his age (76). But we know. We know that's the exterior isn't all that's going on. But we hope for the best.

I often wonder if it's just me that's this morbid - or if this is morbid at all, even. Does anyone else think about deaths they dread? I'm always careful not to say things like, "Mommy will never leave you" to Nate because I feel like that sets up something terrible. Or maybe I'm just being superstitious that way. If you're a parent, do you think about the day you'll have to explain death to your child(ren)?