A Reasonable Conversation
One of these days we'll both be fine
One of these days we’ll both be fine
A Reasonable Conversation
Sometimes when I get a text, I inadvertently glance at my watch and my mother will say, “Why are you looking at your watch?”
Two things I’ve learned from visiting my mother in the hospital is that she doesn’t appreciate (understandably) when I look at my watch or my phone, so I try very hard to not do either.
There is so much in her life that she cannot control, I don’t need to add to her troubles or make her feel bad when I visit. So when I’m at the hospital, I put my watch on Do Not Disturb and keep my phone in my bag.
One afternoon, however, I pulled out my phone to find some trivia games that we could play together. That day we had gone for a walk in the halls, had done word searches, NYT easy crosswords, coloured for a bit, and I was struggling to find us something to do to pass the time.
Jeopardy was one of my mom’s favourite shows. That and Wheel of Fortune, which she liked because it was mindless.
I wanted to find a trivia game that wasn’t too hard but also that wasn’t too easy and would insult her intelligence.
In the bed next to my mother’s, a woman was visiting with her family. They were loud and boisterous, and it was distracting me—that and the pressure from my mother who was glaring at me to get off the phone.
My mother sighed impatiently as I scanned for something for us to play.
“What are you doing on there?” she said annoyed.
“I’m looking for a trivia game for us to play,” I replied. “Just a sec.”
After a couple of minutes of this, she finally said to me in her sharp and stern voice, “Kathryn, I am jealous of that woman.”
“What woman?” I asked.
“The woman over there.” She pointed to the patient in the bed next to hers who was surrounded by her family.
“Why?” I asked.
“Because she is having a reasonable conversation with her family.”
I put the phone down, and we did not play trivia that day.
Read more from One of these days we’ll both be fine
Kathryn Mockler is the author of Anecdotes.
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