We found my mother on the third floor of a hospital that should have been shuttered in the 80’s. The lights were dim and the walls and halls so covered in filth it seemed they had absorbed the misery of the past 30 years and the anguish would no longer wash away. It wasn’t hard to find mom. She screamed “Help me” every couple of minutes. We heard her from the elevator above the endless beeping and the garbled sounds from the PA system. The fact that we were now with her did not alleviate her need to scream. Nor did reasoning. She had fallen again and broken her tailbone. She was 95 and failing and I was the good son— the one who answered the call at 2 AM, booked the 1000 mile trips and tried to find a place where she could end her days in comfort. It was rewarding in an exhausting way. Finding, unexpectedly, I was the one to be counted on. But, listen, there is just so much we can do for one another. There are limits to prerogatives of blood. We practice love, not magic and when, in a moment of lucidity she stared at my face— a face she had known my whole life, and said, “I’m dying,” “Save me.” I was again as helpless as the infant she had held to her breast.