So you need to bring this out in the open and help all of you deal with your parents' real, but irrational, fears. While you see what is happening, they may not. You understand that your parents are being drawn back in time and reexperiencing those awful days when they were realizing how sick their beloved daughter was. Of course you understand, especially now that you're a mother, that while parents can eventually cope with the loss of a child, it's something no one ever fully gets over. How can I stay sensitive to the unimaginable pain that my parents must have experienced while getting them to stop the constant worrying over Sally's health? Their constant fretting over every cold and tummy ache is starting to stress me out! Sincerely, Sick of it While Sally does tend to get more colds and tummy issues than the average kid, she's never had any major health problems, gets a yearly check-up and receives all her vaccinations. Every time Sally gets sick, my parents go on and on about how ill Sally is, saying that 'something's just not right' and urging me to take her to the pediatrician. They've always been hypochondriacs about Sally, but they are now taking it to the extreme. Our daughter, 'Sally' is approaching the age my sister was when she died and I think I can see this starting to get to my parents. Fastforward to the present - I, my husband and our 2 children live near my parents and we're very close to them. This left me an only child and my parents were always extremely protective of me. But if after eight years, he wants to mark your togetherness by giving you something his dentist would otherwise dispose of in the biomedical waste bin, he better be really worth it.Дear Prudie, 25 years ago, when I was a little girl, my younger sister died after a very short battle with an aggressive form of stomach cancer. I acknowledge there are far worse things than being a lousy gift-giver, and if his other qualities make up for it, so be it. You say he's another one in a long line of 'wonderful, but' people. Maybe he got a laugh when you opened the box and reacted in horror. He's not an absent-minded, but well-meaning goofball.

(One of the things that binds my husband and me is that we can never remember when we got married.) But your boyfriend has me rethinking this. I have long defended people who are bad at gifts or don't remember anniversaries because I'm one of them. But I missed your boyfriend's innovation: 8th year, enamel! But the thing about giving an enamel gift one grew in one's mouth is that it should guarantee that the recipient doesn't hang in there long enough to get the 9th anniversary gift of a rectal polyp. There is a list of traditional gifts for anniversaries: 1st year, paper 25th year, silver.

Dear prudence slate