I come from people old people.

My maternal grandmother was born in 1919 and my maternal grandfather was born in 1920.

My paternal grandmother was born in 1916 and my paternal grandfather was born in in 1919.

My parents were roughly 30 when my brother was born and about 32 when I was born.

My maternal grandmother was about 32 when she had my mom and my grandfather was about 31.  My mom is the oldest of two children.

My paternal grandmother was about 35 when she had my dad.  My paternal grandfather was also about 31.  My father is the youngest of three, but his two (much) older brothers were from a previous marriage.

And I have to say, it's kind of weird.  When you have older parents--and I'd say "older" starts at about 30 for my generation--there's such a large life gap there.  You become aware at a very young age of how much older your parents are, and especially when you have classmates in grade school who have moms in their 20s and early 30s.  Or you find out that other people have grandparents the age of your parents.

To make it worse, I feel like I lost out on something.  By the time I was twenty-one I had no grandparents left.  The last one died in 2003 when I was twenty years old.  Before that it was 2000 and then 1987 and 1977.  The men died first (interestingly enough, since they were both younger than their wives).  I never met my father's father.  I have only a few memories of my other grandfather.  I know people my age and older with grandparents still kicking.  Which is easy if you had your kids at 20 and they had their kids at 20.  You could have great-grandparents or even great-great grandparents if you have kids early enough.  Which isn't usually a good idea really--better to have them when you can support them and all that jazz--but definitely possible.

Now that I'm reaching that age that my parents and grandparents were when they had children, I'm becoming more aware of how old my parents seem.  My mom keeps having episodes with her health after spending the latter half of her life avoiding doctors, and I keep wondering every day if that's going to be the day.  I can tell myself "she's not that old," but neither were my grandfathers.  I have so many worries in my life right now regarding my own health ... but since a coworker's dad suffered a stroke recently, every time my mom tells me about how she had some kind of issue and went to the ER, I wonder how long it's going to be.  I have very few relatives as it is.  Basically it's down to my parents and a sibling, and then a bunch of those "Christmas Card" relatives whom I don't even know and only met at my grandfather's funeral when I was 4.

It's horrible to think that I may reach a point where just I have no family left.