My mother is ill. Not just a little bit, but very ill. So sick that her illness makes her miserable and turns her into someone else. She has an autoimmune disease which takes away her strength, COPD, back fractures, swollen legs and osteoarthritis. She is on Oxycontin around the clock, as much as doctors will prescribe her. It barely makes a dent in her pain.

Her world has become really small. She can no longer make it to church, which was the center of her life. Instead we watch televangelists on TV, unless she’s in bed. About the only thing she can successfully do anymore is cook. Some days she makes it to the store with my father. She can read a little, but not for long. She watches TV in the evenings, which distracts her from her pain.

Mom’s world has become really small. She can no longer make it to church, so instead we watch televangelists on TV, unless she’s in bed.

Due to the pain, she says things she never would have, some of which are not repeatable. She gets upset over every little thing, and directs her anger at my father. He doesn’t take it well, and reacts with irritation.

If dad goes upstairs to make phone calls that she’s told him to make, she gets mad at him for being upstairs too long. She will ask him to clean something, but get mad that he’s not out doing some errand. She sends him to Walgreen’s every day to handle her many prescriptions, even though it’s not necessary to go that often.

Shrunken World

I moved in temporarily with my folks a couple of months ago. I believe this is where God wants me for a few months, because I’m a peacemaker.

I tell mom that one of the top editors at my job is always conspiring to ruin my articles.

While I’m working from home, I talk with my folks throughout the day. I calm down their arguments and divert them with discussions of current hot topics I’m writing about. We check President Donald Trump’s tweets every morning. I’m also a chronic jokester, so when mom gets upset with dad, I try to make her complaint into a subject for joking. I tell her we should fire him as her caretaker. Or that we should have an hour long discussion analyzing all of his flaws. She really disliked my ex-husband, so I point out that dad is just as bad as my ex-husband. In reality, my dad is a saint who retired from a career in ministry to take care of mom full time.

Probably the most fun we have is joking about my job and career. One of the top editors in the country edits many of my articles. Mom loves him and his writing. So I tell mom that he is always conspiring to sabotage my articles. He deliberately changes the titles to ensure the articles don’t go viral. He deletes the most important parts of the articles in order to dumb them down. Unlike me, he is not a doctor, so he messes up my analyses of anything in the medical field. Mom used to be an English teacher, so I told her we should give him a taste of his own medicine and have her edit his columns.

One of the writers for our publication is very gifted and very prolific. Mom and I have decided that this poor fellow is my competition. Several times a day we check his articles to see how many Facebook shares they have, then we check the number on my articles. We analyze how worthless his topics are and how thrown together the articles sound.

Sometimes we pretend that I’m writing in the middle of The New York Times headquarters. After I created a video that got a modest amount of views, mom announced that living here is also like being at the headquarters of NBC.

Made-up Stories and Fake Excuses

I make up all kinds of over-the-top stories about longtime family friends. They’re always plotting to do things to us. We’ve got their number; we’ve figured them out.

After a prominent Christian player on our hometown football team declared he was supporting Hillary Clinton for president, we decided not to cheer for the team during the next game.

Whenever mom is able to have guests, I think of fake excuses to rescind the invitations. “They aren’t very nice anyway, let’s just tell them you took a turn for the worse.” I’m always thinking of ways to thwart them. A sign on the door I made says “GO AWAY!!! We already have some, we don’t need any.” I’ve noticed FedEx has since stopped ringing the doorbell when they drop off packages.

Instead of offering guests food, we could post signs next to food and drink on the table with pricing. It’s a privilege to hang out with us, so they should be paying us. We need to be creative about making money. In fact, we should be saving money, so whenever mom barks at dad to bring napkins, I explain that we need to start cutting back on luxuries like napkins.

We play other games. After a prominent Christian player on our hometown football team declared he was supporting Hillary Clinton for president, we decided not to cheer for the team during the next game. As I’m writing this, mom is writing a card from my dog to my brother’s dog, which displays photos of dogs. It begins “Dear cousin Furface.” I tell mom I’ve got to stop being a helicopter parent to my dog, because he needs his space.

Aging Isn’t for Sissies

Living in a small town, my parents used to have people stopping by the house constantly. Now mom rarely can handle guests. She is very private about her health condition, so people still want to stop by, not understanding how difficult it is for her to entertain guests. When my Dad isn’t home, and I’m still in my pajamas, we’ve been known to hide from surprise visitors, who peer through the large front windows, positive we are home.

Compounding this erroneous perception about her health is the fact my mother looks like she is aging well. She’s never smoked, drank, or spent significant time outside in the sun. She loves donuts, so I tell her she’s like a day-old donut; looks great on the outside, but not so great inside.

Mom loves music, and led the church choir for years. She is always playing CDs of classical music. We’re all musicians in our family, so I frequently remind mom that we need to listen closely to the professional CDs for mistakes. Now, the reality is I haven’t played piano in years, so when I played in church recently for our Christmas Eve service, it didn’t turn out so well. This older man who used to lead the choir would jerk his head up every time I played a wrong note! Mom wasn’t able to attend that service, but got a good laugh out of it later.

Still Sharp

Fortunately her mind is still very sharp, although her memory isn’t so good due to the medication. She’ll say, “What do we want for dinner?” I’ll respond, “You forgot, we agreed we were going to fast tonight, in order to have a moment of silence for [insert politically correct cause].” She loves coffee more than almost anything, so I remind her that we agreed the day before to go cold turkey on coffee. She does have a good enough memory that she has figured out this is a repeat joke.

Mom sacrificed a career to stay at home and raise us kids. (Granted, not all parents can afford that option, but believe me, we were close to broke growing up). Now it’s our turn to repay the favor. Having been fairly ill for a somewhat long period of time myself before, I have the capacity and compassion to understand my mother’s behavior. And to try to help make her life just a little bit easier before she goes to be with my sister in heaven.