She's going on 83 and a heart attack has been her worst fear since the 60's. She has always been a nervous, anxiety ridden type and easily depressed--was in mental institutions from most of my childhood and some of my sister's. On meds for depression her whole life but otherwise healthy as a horse with a great diet.

To throw in an additional monkey wrench, both my father and mother have been religiously shunning me for the past 15 years or so since I formerly renounced my affiliation with said religion. Although my younger sister was always much wilder than myself, she never formerly renounced the "religion" so retains "favoured nation status" with my parents as well as being the spoiled, golden-child baby of the family. Problem is she's thoroughly narcissistic and only thinking about an inheritance; which ironically will be almost nothing after the bulk of it goes to the church.
I am most assuredly disinherited from anything anyway since my "shunned" status.

My mother is the more reasonable of the two when it comes to church dogma. She writes me every year shortly after my birthday which falls about two weeks after their wedding anniversary. I send them a small gift and card every year for their anniversary.

Laughably the chain of command as to how I found out is quite convoluted:

My father told my sister, who told my ex-first husband, who told my DD, who told me and my DS.

I phoned the hospital (they live in Maine, I live in NY) and to my surprise, they patched me through to my father, who actually talked to me!!! Hadn't spoken to him since probably about 14-15 years or so.

He said that he would have called me about it but it was very sudden, he doesn't have a smartphone and didn't have my phone number listed as a contact.

Well anyway, I offered my help--my DD stated that my father wanted my sister to come up and help; she lives about 30 minutes away from me now--we don't speak as we have NEVER had anything in common and I was the unfortunate person who verified to her first ex-husband that she was having multiple affairs (she still is on her 2nd husband--she keeps all her old boyfriends as facebook friends, flirts with them as well as my first ex-husband and first ex-BIL)

So she stopped talking to me around 17 years ago--showed up for DD's wedding reception--had some snide comment about my weight (I had lost a LOT of weight at that point). It was rather mutual because I got tired of her "poor me" and victim mentality. She's got a degree in psychology (minimal) but bragged about it till the cows came home (first person in the family to get a degree blah blah) But never held down a full-time job in her life longer than a year despite having no children to care for. The antithesis of me--I've been working for 40 years holding down at least one full time job at any point--often more and supporting myself instead of relying on men, but I digress.

She now works part-time as a high school bus driver--is unhappily married to her sugar daddy--who seems to have run low on sugar. The bus drive job is probably a bad fit for her because she's the type to flirt with 17 and 18 year olds and get in trouble like you hear about so often on the news.

My father also mentioned that he will be getting plenty of help from the church as there are many RNs who are church members, etc. etc.

Well, if nothing else, this episode also emphasizes that I should take better care of my health as I'm taking strides to do lately