I have been noticing for the past two years that my parents are both slowing down a lot.

Mom's hands hurt her so much that she had to give up rigorous practicing (she plays the oboe), and therefore had to give up her regular spot as the second oboe on the local symphony. She still can fill in, but she misses playing in the group. But what can she do? When she comes to visit, she does more sitting and resting than before. She isn't so hyper about clearing away any random glass or cleaning the countertops. Laundry is left undone, at least partially. She sleeps in a lot, too.

The big change I am noticing, however, is in Dad. Mom and Dad are both 67. He's always been very high-energy. He works like a dog, and has always been a workaholic. He quit his job as a doctor affiliated with a local hospital 5 years ago to branch out on his own and start his own medical clinic. Soon he expanded to 3 clinics, and he's had a lot of success. He employs about 40 people now, and he sees patients and works on charting 6 full days a week. He commutes to his clinics in the neighboring towns each week. When Dad used to come and visit, he was busy on the phone for business, ebay buying medical equipment, and outside doing random jobs around the house for Mac and me.

He has indeed slowed down physically. When he is here he sleeps a lot- he usually doesn't get up until 10 or so. He seems tired all the time, and he doesn't take on many projects. He seems to get fewer calls from work. He says he's scaling back at work, giving more managerial responsibilties to my sister (his manager), and more medical-decision making authorities to the doctor and nurse practitioners who work for him. He's doing less micromanaging, which is a good thing, but it is a sign that he's slowing down.

The biggest change I've noticed is that he just isn't acting the same he used to. On this past visit, he crashed our third car, leaving it drivable but damaged enough that insurance will not cover repairs, and will instead junk it. We will be down a car, which is probably OK because in less than 2 years we will be moving for fellowship and we would need to get rid of the car before then. But, we weren't really wanting the car to get crashed. It makes our lives much simpler to have the spare car, so that we have an extra for visitors and for when our other cars are in the shop, which seems to happen A LOT. Now we need to get a rental car rider on our policy, plus pay extra for losing the *accident forgiveness* status since this crash is the 2nd at fault crash in 2 years.

All told, I don't know how much money we're going to lose, but I do know what my dad would have done 5 years ago. He would have paid for it. He would have given me a check before he left to cover the deductible that insurance will take from the check they cut us eventually. He would have paid us something to offset the increase in premiums we'll have to pay. He would have apologized for this inconvenience, this headache. I am befuddled by his reaction to this entire thing. I am bewildered, confused, alarmed... He has totally behaved in a way that DH and I can not understand. It is completely out of character... He told me two separate times that this is a "blessing in disguise" and a "good opportunity" to get rid of the old car and get paid something for it. Then, in the next 5 minutes, he's looking up salvage values and telling me that I should buy it back from insurance and sell the parts to salvage yards myself. And then in 5 minutes he's telling me that we should DUCT TAPE it together in the front and drive it for 2 years and THEN sell it to salvage yards...

What he's not telling me is that he's sorry, he accepts responsibility, and he will do what he can to make it right.

When I asked him about the deductible, and if he'd pay for that (it's $500, not chump change to dh and me), he just looked at me... I think he was shocked I would ask. Was that out of line? I don't think so. When I asked him if he would help cover the increase in premiums since this accident kicks us up into a higher risk category for the next 3 years until dh's accident is "forgiven", he said "Well, it WOULD HAVE BEEN my second accident on my account too." WTF? I didn't crash the car, so I really don't understand what he was saying. It's like I was asking him to pay for increased premiums for MY accident.

These conversations would not have happened 5 years ago. Is this amount of money too insignificant for him to comprehend? I don't think so, since he made a point of telling me how much he had to pay for my mom's plane ticket out to visit me last July (ironically, it was $500 which he thought was astronomical).

I'm just really disturbed by it all. It's not the money, it's the crashing down of what I used to think was his greatest characteristic: generosity. He was one of the most generous people I knew. And now some of the comments he made in the last week lead me to think that he wasn't so generous. Maybe he was keeping an accounting of everything in his head- every "gift" he's given, every "accident" he's paid for... I don't know.

I feel like superman is aging. My dad can't do it all.

I just don't feel old enough to deal with all this myself. To deal with life by myself. My safety net of going home to be taken care of has been pretty much removed. I guess I'm completing the transition from "child" to "autonomous adult" and am closer to the stage of taking care of my parents than the stage of them taking care of me... I've been there a while, but the realization is just now hitting home.

It's depressing!