A Glass of Water

Just when I think the matriarch is completely blind, she comes down 2 flights of stairs, through a narrow hallway, and into the family room. She wants a glass of water. I look at her and wonder if she could see that well, why didn't she just go into the bathroom and get one herself?

The thing I don't understand or have a hard time understanding is the difference between what the matriarch needs and how she "uses" me to get what she wants. She only asks me for her bananas, a constant desire it seems, lately. But, she never asks my husband. There is a bit, okay a lot, of tension in the house because of the matriarch's constant requests to me and my husband's obliviousness to her desires. I don't want to say "demands" but really she is so very demanding--she is driving me crazy and my husband thinks it is just old age, seniors get like this. But, it is really hard when one is on call 24/7; I have sympathy for nurses in institutions because if whole crowds of old people get like this, it must make a difficult situation even worse.

But I wonder, of course, when the mentality arose to somehow justify this behaviour? I mean I wonder about retirement and the right to spend one's senior years doing nothing; it is as though the reward for doing all those years of work is to do nothing...I tend to think people who have spent their lives doing valuable work wouldn't suddenly like being put out to pasture. But I also understand the need to not to have to do so much. My husband completely disagrees with me and is desperate for his retirement; but, he is not desperate enough to retire and assume full responsibility for his mother.