Choices

Tonight the Presidential candidates debate. As I sit on my mother's couch and their words spill from the tv and fill the living room I am aware that I should care. I should listen attentively to their opinions, watch their body language as they speak, evaluate their opinions on the economy, energy, Iraq and all the issues that plague our world. But tonight the only words I care about are my mother's. Words she spoke to my sister last night, words that let me know she is getting ready. She is preparing to leave us.

I balance those words with my inability, no not inability, my unwillingness to leave the hospital early today when she needed me. She needed me and I could have gone to her, I would not have lost my job, in fact I didn't accomplish much after I knew she was alone. Alone and waiting. Waiting for me to help her. Because she wasn't hurt, she hadn't fallen, there was no real emergency I chose not to go to her. She was safe. I was selfish.

I should care about the debate and on some level I do, I am concerned about our future. But tonight it is my mother's future that consumes me and as I help her into bed, look into her eyes I see what I fear the most. I see that she knows. She knows on a deeper level than I can imagine that her future holds more time like today, time when she will need help, when she will have to rely on others even more than she does now. With all she has forgotten, I hope she'll forget that when she needed me today I wasn't here.