The reality has hit

I'm 47M and now-divorced parents are each 75. My dad has been on borrowed time for a while and I am amazed he's still here - diagnosed with cardiomyopathy over 20 years ago and has had a pacemaker and now a LVAD installed. And he stubbornly wants bacon at every breakfast and fried chicken or red meat at every meal. I need to be making my peace but he's gone culty-evangelical Christian over the last 10 years or so and it's just hard to have conversations - we can't get into difficult topics, including the struggles I'm going through, without MAGA-esque conspiracy theories or light proselytizing that I need to trust that Jesus will take care of it all. The day will come, probably sooner than I'm ready for, and I'm trying to find a way to make sure I have no regrets.

Mom is a harder one - was always closer to her as a child and I was her favorite, but she changed fundamentally when her mother died a handful of years ago - she was more or less my grandmother's caretaker, and seems to have taken on her persona once she passed. When I spend time with her she is visibly anhedonic and spends a lot of time just sitting - not sure if it's a sign of cognitive decline or just a lack of interest, but there is no sense of irony or humor anymore - I've always been minimum 20% facetious and a wise-ass in everything I say and she rolled with it, but everything is answered fully literally now. I am getting an increasingly gnawing sense that this is a sign of something bigger and scarier, but having those conversations is a third rail.

I am mostly just putting this out in the ether like many on this sub do, and wondering how others have dealt with that time when the realization hits - they're not the same anymore and it won't be getting any easier from here out. Peace and love to all of you strong people.