Mom’s best friend, Gloria, has arrived from Halifax to spend several days with Mom. She is staying downstairs in mom’s suite, of course, and it’s neat for her to have the run of the place, her own space. She got up in the morning and did her own thing. When she left to visit mom, she went out by the back door, and around to where the car is parked. It occurs to me that it was always our plan that mom would use that back door as her main point of entry, that it would be her separate door; that’s why we even installed lighting around the north side of the house. But she never used it. It also occurs to me that although Gloria has been here for two nights, now, she has not once called up the stairs to ask for our help with anything. She came up and visited yesterday morning for a while, but beyond that she has been totally independent. It occurs to me that if my mother had shown that type of independence, our relationship over the last year and a half would not have been nearly as strained.