THE ETHICIST TAP : DYING MOTHER [A]

IT'S PERFECTLY FINE to say that you want to spend your major annual holiday with your husband and children, or indeed, that you'd rather see your mother on your own.

You should make accommodations for her, and she should for you ; your wishes and needs matter, too.

At the same time, it's worth trying to see what may lie behind some of her demands. A prognosis measured in years can distract from another reality :

Before death comes dying.

The time she has left is likely to include a period of increasing frailty, discomfort, dependence and confinement. Faced with the prospect of having much less usable time with the people she loves than she once imagined, she may feel a sense of urgency about gathering them around her.

Her focus on shared vacations would seem to be her way of building on to that family and filling the time she has with shared memories.

That's a deeply understandable desire even if she's expressing it in ways that are difficult for her children.

This Master Ethicist Answer continues to part [2]. !WOW! thanks Professor Kwame Anthony Appiah who teaches philosophy at N.Y.U.