So far away from me

They say that absence makes the heart grow fonder, but it also breaks it.
I just got back from a week-long visit with my parents -- first my dad, then my mother. Both experiences were like stepping into a hot port-a-potty.
The visits home make it more apparent than ever that life as I remember it is not encased in amber.
My father is no longer the healthy man from my youth. He is now partially hunched over, the victim of a cruel spine. Two of his vertebrae have fused together and he spends most of his time partially hunched over, making it impossible for him look up at anything.
Mother is still looking good. She just bought a workout machine that my brother and I put it together-- despite the sabotaging of technical writers that obviously didn't use English as a primary language.
She doesn't need the machine though, never has. Her metabolism, which is about the same as a meth-addled hummingbird, has always kept her light on the scales and high in the ranks of middle-aged envy.
She will probably just use it because it makes her think of me.
Seeing my brother also made me a bit sad. Seems like he is having trouble finding a good girl, but I told him it took me almost 30 years, even though I wasn't exactly trolling the halls of my elementary school, which really makes the figure closer to 20.
But we are all just hanging on one day at a time.