I woke up at five pm Sunday to the news that my brother had taken my mom to the emergency room and she was being admitted to the hospital with pneumonia and a suspected blood clot in her lung.

It's now six-thirty pm Monday and except for one or two drift-offs on the broken chair bed in her room, I have been awake pretty much the entire time. So forgive me if my mind roams.

Good news. No clot. Bad news the doctor on call for her doctor didn't have priveledges at "my" hospital so she is cross town. I'm not to thrilled. Mostly that in the entire 14 hours I was there yesterday and over night, only one person actually laid a stethescope on my mother and listened to her pneumonia having lungs. There is more, but that's not what is really bothering me.

Pneumonia. They call the old man's friend because it is supposedly a quiet way to die. You just drift away.

And it isn't about recognizing the mortality of all mankind. I'm not naive. I'm not young enough to not look at it. Not with my own hair turning white and my joints starting to creak and my eye doc handing me a prescription for bifocals.

It's just scary because it was always some distant future. But time is running short now and every time something like this happens, it makes me realize it. My mother is 70 years old. In great health other than this current thing, but still. Seventy.

Do I realistically have more than another ten years with her?

When my grandparents died, I was late teens/early twenties. I don't remember wondering how my mom handled it. I just assumed she was a grown up and knew what to do.

Now I'm the grown up. And I'm not sure I know what to do.