I Guess I'm Just Getting to that Age...

So, the first relative I ever lost was my grandfather on my American side, earlier this year. He died of a disease (I forget the name) that causes his body to produce too many white blood cells, thus thinning out his blood. He lived with the disease for a while and survived a good while longer than expected. His eventual death was somewhat expected, though it did little to ease the pain of his passing.

Just minutes ago, I received a phone call from my brother that my grandfather on my Japanese side was just diagnosed with the same disease. I don't know how advanced the disease is at this stage, and am waiting for word on his life expectancy. The man is 87 years old, so I suppose he's already on borrowed time, but I hope that they caught it early.

Due to my father having issues with his parents, I rarely got to see my American grandparents. We wrote letters to each other every so often, but when my grandfather died, I hadn't seen him in 10 years. My Japanese grandparents, on the other hand, I saw every summer of my youth, as my parents would send me to Japan every year for summer vacation. And as an adult, I've had the advantage of having a job that sends me to Japan multiple times a year (7 times this year alone o_O), allowing me to spend as much time with them as possible. But that also means that I'm much closer to my Japanese grandpa, and his eventual passing will likely hit me much harder.


Update: The doctor says he has about a month. Looks like I'm heading out to Japan.