mother

This isn't okay. I'm not going to accept this. This has been developing over years, we watched it slowly grow over the years from stress to high blood pressure to higher blood pressure, and no one says anything about it because it's the big pink elephant sitting in our room. We didn't see how we could change anything, about your work-day that, at 65 years old, stress me out just thinking of them, about the delicate cycle of self-sufficiency you wrap you and dad in. Even though I think you were asking--in your really self-subsuming way--for help. You didn't want to bother us, and we let you do it, let you until your heart couldn't do it alone anymore.

When I think of you in the ER being put under so they could use a defibrillator to restart your heart's rhythm, and I imagine dad sitting for four hours in the waiting room not calling us... What is that?! We're your children, call us when you're in the hospital, let us help--better yet, let us help before you get there.

Not that it's your fault, we should be looking for ways to help you without encroaching on that vaunted independence you've always valued and we've always respected. But still... you should have called us. What if the defibrillator hadn't worked, what if we'd lost you without being there to see you?!

That is not acceptable. I don't accept it. Something will have to change, even if we have to take some of that independence away. People need rest and joy at 65, not more of the same exhausting ring-around only with worse health.

So I'll wash your floors, and I'll be the e-newsletter editor you need and I'll go visit grandma if it makes you happy. Because I was raised by you and I know the indirect and unnecessary guilt you willfully live under every day. Performance, and all that. But it's not enough, and you might as well un-pinch those pursed lips of yours, because your children will be meddling. Hopefully, in time.