I hadn't been pregnant in 20 years, but this was planned just as my previous pregnancies had been. For no logical reason, I woke up one day and knew that it was correct; my entire being knew it was precisely the right time. Of course, the clarity was subtly infiltrated with uncertainties and fears as soon as the decision was made.

When I woke up that morning a little more than a year ago, I knew it was time to ask my parents to move closer to me. By closer, I mean 1,300 miles closer—all the way from suburban Philadelphia to Lincoln, Neb. The logistics, both geographically and culturally, were overwhelming. The distance between the East Coast and the Midwest had never seemed so vast.

I'm 55 years old. The last time I lived less than 100 miles from my parents, I was 18. But reports from the East kept telling me they were not able to keep up the house—the house they had moved into when I was 3 months old. Assorted ailments were making their day-to-day life harder to sustain. Where the clarity of my decision came from remains a mystery. I suspect that my parents felt the same. How and why they knew it was time to sell the house and move from their carefully delineated lives was a flash of certainty for them as well.

So I waited for their house to get cleared out and sold. I knew the delivery would be easier than labor. (Thank God for small blessings.) While my parents faced a multitude of decisions, I merely waited, sure that I wanted this change and terrified of what would become of my own life.

At the beginning of this "pregnancy," just as at the beginning of all my pregnancies, I read. When I was pregnant with my children, it was a challenge to narrow down the volumes of advice. Every week of pregnancy and virtually every hour of labor were clearly outlined. This time, however, I looked in vain for books that explained how to move your parents halfway across the country and settle them into a new life. What would the first week be like? What were the progressive stages we would all go through? The necessary information just didn't seem to exist.

So instead, I turned to the Web site of the local agency on aging. In place of Lamaze, a friend who works with the elderly shared her knowledge and experience. I listened to all the stories of my friends who have aging parents nearby, just as I had eagerly questioned all my friends who had already started families. Everyone seemed to be stumbling along without any real answers.

Just as we'd picked a pediatrician, there were doctors to be found and services to be located. Instead of shopping for furniture for a nursery, I had to find my parents an apartment. My babies, now 23 and 21 years old, hadn't given any prior input into their living arrangements, and my parents also put the decision into my hands. "Find us a place. You'll do fine." Where would they shop? Where would my mother make her weekly hair appointment? Where would they find the friends and social support they would?

I didn't want to have any illusions. All the old mixed feelings about my parents came back. I reminded myself that we're different people now. They're no longer the powerful forces I once perceived as holding me back from the life I desperately wanted to start. They're people who now depend, to a large extent, on me. I'm running the show—except, of course, I'm not. They're my parents and that doesn't change.

But what is possibly the most difficult outcome looms. Just as children move away, my parents are going to die. When my children were young, lots of vague passages of Khalil Gibran floated around my head; we were all free agents, the children would leave and I would be a model of non-attachment, continuing with my life, joyfully releasing them to their own journeys. Nothing prepared me for the pain that went along with this happy release.

Perhaps if my parents still lived 1,300 miles away, I'd feel the pain of separation less when they eventually leave. But they are now part and parcel of my everyday life and the huge gap they will leave will be more overwhelming than it would be otherwise.

But I survived my children's entries into my everyday world and their exit into their own lives, now mysterious and private. I came through my parents' entry and will get through their eventual leaving. I'll be shown again the foolishness of my conceits, the infinitely greater sweetness and richness of life, the poignant beginning and ending of yet another cycle.

Rickover lives in Lincoln, Neb.