All Soul's Day

We attended the All Soul’s Mass as a family. But we are a little short in the pew these days – Tween and Bookworm are frequently up at the altar serving. December 7th Youngest will serve his first Mass with his siblings. That will mean that Ex-Marine and I will be sitting in the pews alone – an empty nest already! It does make you feel old.
Listening to the names of the people who have passed away over the last year gave me time to think about death and aging. I knew some of the people but no one was a relative so I didn’t have to make the walk up the aisle to light a memorial candle. (That's always a relief because the polished concrete floors of our new church are S-L-I-C-K and I always worry about falling! At least in the communion line I have people in front of and behind me that might catch me if I started to go down - or I could take them all down with me and noone would be able to figure out that it was me who caused the dominos to tumble. All on my own, though, I'd be so nervous.) Our family is blessed in that both Ex-Marine’s parents and my parents are still alive and kicking. But they are not young; they are in their seventies – except for Granny, my MIL, the youngster still in her sixties. We even have one great grandparent, Granny’s mom, still healthy and a part of our lives in her eighties. My parents seem invincible. I can’t imagine them getting old or feeble. My dad is a worker bee – constantly in the yard. He is a gardener more than a “lawn ranger”. In fact, I think every year he finds another spot to plant so he will have increasingly less grass to mow! My mom is not as physically active as my father but she’s no slouch! She keeps house, shopping, cooking meals, takes care of all the grandparent duties of baby sitting and gift sending! And she is a socialite – playing cards and doing churchly women things.
But still, the list made me wonder if next year we will walk up the aisle to light a candle for someone we love. We are passing through these waves of life – marriages, babies, First Communions, and now, it seems, increasingly more – funerals. My friends are losing their parents and I wonder if my turn is coming. I’d like to skip my turn, thank you, I’ll just pass.