My grandmother is only one day into her infirmity and doped up on Morphine. Her shoulder is immobile
beneath layers of plaster. Her eighty-five-year-old frame droops from the weight of it.
My mother confesses: she cannot take care of her mother. I am not she says a nursemaid.
My mother is angry. Angry at my sister who didn’t give enough support, angry at my grandmother
for shuffling her feet, angry even at the dog that was tucked beneath my grandmother’s arm
as they all three tried to squeeze into the door of the vet’s office. She calls me from the emergency room
to say that grandmother fractured her shoulder in three places. She’s become an invalid overnight, she says. My sister calls her cruel
for refusing to run the bathwater, refusing to wash my grandmother’s naked body, for not even considering renting
a wheelchair for her to move from place to place. When grandmother whispers that she is afraid to walk, my mother
tells her that there’s nothing wrong with her legs, tells her she’ll have to go to a nursing home if she won’t walk
to the bathroom: one piss in the bed is understandable, two is teetering too close to in-home care.
My sister does not understand that there is too much to overcome between them— always the memory of the black dress
grandmother refused to wear on the day of her husband’s funeral— the way she turned to my mother and said,
I am not in mourning.
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