Why Don't You Smile?

Don't get me wrong...I love my mother. Only problem is, this old, old woman bears almost no resemblance to my sharp, funny mom. She's depressed, confused and cranky more often than not. That first Shabbos home (or more accurately, at Chayie and Dave's house),
she drove me totally bonkers. As previously documented, I had lost my sense of humor somewhere back in the ICU, together with one sock. I was feeling so lousy that I sat at the Shabbos table and moped, not at all like my usual loquacious, charming self. My mother sat across the table and said, "why don't you smile?" Firstly, this was the quintessential case of the pot calling the kettle black: she was grumpy and depressed herself, quite incapable of practicing what she was preaching. Secondly, because of her total lack of any short-term memory to speak of, she repeated it every few minutes..."Why don't you smile?" "Why don't you smile?" "Why don't you smile?" What's it called when you off your own mother, matricide? Well, I honestly believe that no jury in the world would have convicted me. Another time she got on this kick where she wanted to give me one of her lungs. I tried not to be an ingrate. While I appreciate the offer, I said, I don't think the doctors would be too keen on transplanting a wrinkly, worn out, 90-year old lung into my 59-year old chest. Why not, she countered, it's probably in better shape than yours (I actually had no retort for that irrefutable bit of logic). Again, this magnanimous offer was repeated over and over again. And then there was the time when Mom wasn't happy that I was breathing through a nasal cannula attached to R2D2. "Why do you need that thing," she wanted to know.
"The doctor told me to use it".
"But you don't need it".
"Remember when the doctors told Dad that he needed a pacemaker?
He got one, didn't he?"
"Daddy never had a pacemaker".
Like I said: no jury in the world...