The no win situation

So the email was from my sister, chastising me for neglecting my mother and for preventing her from communicating with my kids.

Anyone who's read here very much knows that my relationship with my mother is and has been rocky. For reasons that I only partly understand she doesn't (for the most part ) approve of what I've done with my life--I'm sure she'd tell you how proud she is that I earned a PhD and she might say that she's proud that I became a priest (but honestly, I'm not sure about that one.) But she tells me all the time how selfish and uncaring I am, and how I've messed things up for my kids, and how with all my education and training I should do better. She doesn't always tell me directly, but she tells me. Some times we can have a decent conversation, but more often than not she gets upset by something I've said --and I swear that I don't try to provoke her.

Anyway, she's had a rough patch lately, and she's now in an assisted living facility in Disney City in the South where my sister lives, and she is confined to a wheelchair. I've talked to her a few times, but only briefly.

My sister's call was precipitated by a call my mother made to me. It came in the middle of a long afternoon of back to back meetings, and I couldn't talk. I called her back that evening but she didn't answer so I left a message. I should have known better. I should have realized that she wouldn't check her voice mail.

So three days later I get this email. My mother wants my daughter's address to send her a birthday card and if I won't talk to my own mother the very least I can do is not prevent her from contacting my children. Excuse me?

Then it's as if she's channeling my mother because I get the lecture that I've gotten periodically from her about how someone with my education and training should do better, should be more
... whatever. Maybe it's true, I don't know, but the lectures don't help.

I sent her NSLS's address and told her I'd respond to the rest of her message later. I've composed the reply in my head over and over--the snarky one, the mean one, the reasonable one. More than likely it won't matter what I say. My sister and I have a complicated relationship, too, and we couldn't be more different. I shouldn't care what she thinks of me. But that's easier to say than to actually feel.

All this does make me sad. Very sad.