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I spoke to my mother briefly before her surgery, then again just before the rehab facility was ready to discharge her. Both times, she talked as if we’d never lost touch. She complained that she didn’t know what I was doing, but she didn’t ask, and I had no interest in telling her.

I engaged the home health aide she requested. A few days after she got home, she called again to make sure I had arranged for somebody to run her errands and clean her house. With every word she spoke, I got angrier.

She had a hearing aid, so I spoke loudly and distinctly, but she kept interrupting me. This happened several times. Finally, I stopped speaking.

“Hang on,” she said. “Let me check something.” When she got back on the phone, she told me that her hearing aid was working fine. “I guess it just can’t hear you,” she said. I went cold.

I’d spent enough of my life thinking I was going to suffocate to death with her lying next to me doing nothing. I couldn’t feel fear—either hers or mine—anymore. Just incandescent rage.