After attending 3 wakes in the past month involving the passing on of friends' aged parents or parent-in-law, I am beginning to feel a little uneasy that my husband and I haven't really started planning for his aging parents.  For two of our friends, their parents passed away after a long struggle with illness.  For the third, the mom died suddenly after being admitted to the hospital and diagnosed with acute lung infection. These things are sad, and we tend to brush them aside as unfortunate events that probably won't happen to us.  But according to my best friend who works in a step-down care hospital for the aged, it is more and more common to see aged parents who suffer long bouts of illness which require long-term care.  She has seen families quarrel over the financing of parental care.  Some have even left the parents in the hospital and ......