She Can’t See How Much Of A Jerk She’s Being, Either

My mother has been one of the primary points of support for my elderly grandparents for the past several years, driving across town to their home and doing their laundry, buying their groceries, and cooking them dinner once or twice a week. It is tiring and time-consuming for her, and personally, I think they take her for granted more often than not.

My grandmother has had macular degeneration for some time now, and while she has had many genuine health issues, she’s also unfortunately quite a drama queen about them if it gets her attention. These days, it means that every third sentence from her contains some variation of “I can’t see anything.” I thought that was an exaggeration until I visited last Christmas. It really is constant!

It drives my mother up the wall sometimes, especially when this affliction seems to conveniently come and go whenever my grandmother does or doesn’t want to do something. Usually, Mom just grits her teeth and never calls her on it.

Last year, my mom was asked to visit them to help with putting up their Christmas decorations. My uncle had apparently been by already and had put up their fake tree, but my mom needed to come over because “it didn’t look right.” My grandmother complained about how awful it looked until mom came to help. 

It turns out that my uncle had half-a**ed the job and never opened up the branches properly, so of course, the tree looked awful! Mom spent a few hours redoing this chore and then decorating the tree for my grandmother, who sat and supervised (and complained). Apparently, from across the room, my grandmother was able to see which ornaments Mom was hanging and direct her where to put them or go off down memory lane about where they came from.

Finally, Mom was finished with the tree and asked my grandmother, “How does that look?”

Of course, Mom knew as soon as she’d said it…

“Oh, I don’t know, honey. You know I can’t see anything anymore.”

“Well, you could see well enough to know it looked bad before!”

Suddenly, it seemed my grandmother couldn’t hear, either. Not when someone was calling her on her BS! Mom decided to leave before she lost her cool.