I blinked and everyone got old.
I lived and breathed and went about my business, and my children were grown.
The ones to whom I was a child become fragile; time become a more bitter enemy with each passing day.
It's something that has been on my mind quite a bit lately.
I think the biggest difference between being a thirty-something and being a forty-something is that the next ones up the line from you-the aunts, uncles, parents, and possibly grandparents-are getting close to check out time. It makes one start to think, for the first time in any sort of real way, that when this group passes the next one up...is us.
 Me.
 My most immediate loved ones.
Or, put another way, all the truths that were communicated to us when we were younger, and were lost upon us in our youth, become more and more real. Time does fly. Years do slip away. No thing lasts forever. No one lasts forever. To paraphrase Neil Gaiman's Death (which would be my choice of Reaper, if ever I was given one), that is what gives them value.
It's just a shame that sometimes we don't recognize that value until after it is too late to add to it.
If it's been awhile since you told the ones who matter that you loved them, now might be a good time to start.
:/