My mother stayed at the hospital all night with my grandmother. My grandmother is not speaking but does a lot of crying and screaming whenever strangers aka doctors and nurses approach her. My mother believes that when the pneumonia is better, my grandmother will become more lucid. She stays by her side out of love, obligation, hope, fear and a thousand other emotions. Even if I go to the hospital, my mother will not leave her mother’s side. My mother has no idea how much I sat at her side after her knee replacements just as my father has no memory of the hours I stared at his monitors after his stroke, but we still sit and wait whenever this happens. My father is livid that my mother sat up all night watching and worrying over my grandmother. He sees the same scenario played out with the increasingly closer together hospitalizations. He will watch helplessly as my mother exhausts herself physically and emotionally until she is suddenly sitting somewhere, sobbing uncontrollably for no reason and every reason. He is angry that I can’t take a shift so that my mother can sleep and my mother is angry that I keep asking her to go home. I am useless in the sea of pain and anxiety that surrounds my family and others I care about. I hate this feeling but I am insulated by the feeling of unconditional love in my family. Life is painful and hard but it is beautiful and wonderful. I am going to hold a ray of sunshine right now.