12/23/02 - 2:55 a.m.

Chose a week to stay visiting my parents. I think I may have been a bit hasty. A week seems very long. I am sure in hindsight it will appear even longer.

I suppose to the outsider it�s strange that I am choosing to visit Dear Old Dad and Crazy Mum in spite of all the potential hell they could inflict upon me while my fianc� sits in uncomfortable silence. The only excuse I have for going, besides all of that obligatory love I have for them, is guilt. Guilt that beats down the annoyance and irritation. Guilt screams louder than any other emotion, pretty often it is all I can hear.

When I do visit, it�s convenient for Crazy Mum to use me for errands. She knows I am especially willing since I rarely have the opportunity to be in her command. She often talks about how she wishes she would have taken me up on an offer I made to her a few years ago.

The offer was simply this: I would drop out of college, get a full time job and rent an apartment so that she could live with me and be under my care instead of Dear Old Dad's. At the time, she had flatly refused to even consider my suggestion. Her biggest fear being that she will be a burden on her children. So I went off to college. Now, three years later, she wants to cash in on that coupon even though the expiration date has long since passed. The paper it is printed on is yellowed, the offer is so old.

I am never sure if her mentions of regret are genuine or just verbal thoughts inspired by momentary agitation. I do know that I cannot go back and be the caretaker she needs. Even if my head is drowning in the guilt.

I wonder, often, if my mother had been healthy, how would my life be different? What if, instead of always carrying a bag of pills, she had carried a bag of cookies? What if, instead of making the hospital her second home, she had frequented PTA meetings?

What am I doing? It�s no fun to play What If, it always makes reality a little harder to bear.

Besides if things changed even slightly, even if she had perhaps breathed 25 respirations instead of 20 in a particular minute, I might not be here, twenty steps away from Chess. It is true what they say about things working out in the end. If only I didn�t have to go through there to get to here, I could be a bit less bitter about it.