“No.”
After ten minutes:
“Maybe just the chicken.”
We found ways to preserve dignity in tiny pieces.
Her children visited.
But not often.
Daniel usually stayed an hour.
Marcus brought groceries and then spent half the visit answering work calls.
Leah came with beautiful flowers and complained that Margaret’s room smelled like medicine.
Every visit ended with some version of:
“Nora, I don’t know how you do it.”
“You have the patience of a saint.”
“Mom always liked you best anyway.”
That last one was not true.
Margaret had been suspicious of me for years.
She thought I spent too much money on coffee.
She criticized the way I seasoned vegetables.
She once told Ethan:
“She reads too many instructions. A woman ought to know when bread is done by smell.”
But affection came slowly.
That made it real.
There were nights I resented everyone.
That part matters.
Caregiving stories become dishonest when the caregiver is written like a saint.
I was not.
I got angry.
Tired.
Short-tempered.
Sometimes I sat in the bathroom for ten minutes because it was the only room where nobody needed anything from me.
Ethan helped when he was home.
He changed bedding.
Lifted his mother.
Drove her to appointments.
But work kept him away more than either of us liked.
One winter evening, Margaret had been calling every twenty minutes.
Water.
Bathroom.
Blanket.
Too hot.
Too cold.
Pain in her hip.
Pain in her shoulder.
Owen was sick.
Ethan was stuck in Bellhaven because of an equipment emergency.
At one in the morning, I helped Margaret back into bed.
Then I sat down and started crying.
Not quietly.
Ugly crying.
Margaret looked at me.
“Nora.”
“I’m fine.”
“You are leaking from your face.”
I laughed despite myself.
Then cried harder.
“I’m tired.”
“I know.”
“I’m so tired.”
She waited.
I said the thing I had been ashamed to say.
“I’m not even your daughter.”
Margaret’s eyes sharpened.
“Don’t say that.”
“It’s true.”
“You have children who should be here too.”
“They have lives.”
“So do I.”
The words came out harsher than I intended.
“I had a job.”
“I had friends.”
“I had things I wanted to do.”
“Sometimes I feel like my whole life is pills and laundry and appointments.”
