My mother has had a run of bad luck lately. She was in a minor fender bender with a taxi cab driver no less. I was appointed the task of handling all the details of this drama for her because she is incapable of taking care of them herself.

Under normal circumstances the steps you walk through in such times are a tad stressful but for the most part simple and basic. You call your insurance. You call your collision repair specialist. You call the rental car place. You handle the ticket by either paying money and going to defensive driving classes or paying more money and hiring a traffic attorney.

Which is what I chose to do for my mother: Pay someone else to handle her problems for me. After all it’s the American way.

The most difficult task when dealing with my mother is her lack of intelligence. She was never a smart woman and now I find myself watching what little brain she had melting away into nothingness.

My sisters empathize with her. I, on the other hand, feel nothing but anger and contempt. This is just one more thing, one more reason why, it is our job to take care of her. She is our mother. We are supposed to take care of her therefore we do.

Just like she took care of us?

Her personality is changing and it’s not for the better. She doesn’t understand, she is no longer able to comprehend certain things, so no matter how many time they are repeated, no matter how many ways they are described, no matter how many languages we speak to her in, she just doesn’t get it.

For the past 11 days she has been driving a new rental car. Once she returned to the drivers’ seat of her old piece of shit, she knew something was different, she knew something was wrong, she just couldn’t quite recall what a complete and utter piece her old ford was.

“Are you sure they fixed my car?”

“Yes mom, remember the big huge dent on the front passengers side with all the red and blue paint from the taxi cab? That’s all gone. See… It’s all shiny and new.”

“But it sounds funny”

“Yeah, well sorry mom, but your car is a fucking piece of shit!”