Sorry Ma

When shelter in place hit my mother handled it really, really well.

She did not break shelter-in-place rules to drive over to check on me.

She did not call daily asking if I had been infected.

She did not mail me giant care packages of canned food + masks

(she does still send me cards every week, but cardmaking is her sanity-saving hobby)

Instead she texted, as she has learned this is my preferred mode of communication. It's the only method that doesn't suck up 30 minutes minimum of our time. She asked how I was doing and if I still had my job.

As proof that I was doing okay (really), I started texting her memes every other day. I knew she didn't really use social media so she wouldn't see anything except scary news stories on TV.

One of the first ones I sent was this one: https://www.reddit.com/r/rarepuppers/comments/fxz0ym/all_the_humans_with_muzzles_who_did_they_bite/

It got to the point my feed dried up, and I had to start actively looking for memes to send her. It felt a bit silly; I should have been sending her CDC reports, mask patterns, or shelter-in-place exercises, but no. Just a litany of photoshopped bad jokes.

One week it got so hot I stopped sending them, lest my phone battery explode, and she immediately checked in to see if I was okay.

This week there weren't any memes, which she understood. Instead we just had some sorrowful "Yeah, mom, it sucks right now but this is how the world gets better" exchanges. Still texts. I couldn't find words to use over a phone.

For reference, my mother has pretty much all the health issues that make COVID a death sentence. Honestly speaking I should probably try to spend more time with her while I can, understanding that at any moment she could end up quarantined until the end. However, I've grown up expecting my mother to die before I ever graduated high school (another story for another time) so I've prepared myself so hard for this inevitability I fear I'm too jaded now to confront it.

Instead I just keep sending memes - funny memes, geeky memes, sad memes, honest memes, cute memes, scifi memes, fantasy memes, any memes I can find - in the hopes that maybe they can communicate my wish that she stay positive right now. They're my crutch, my pathetic excuse at social interaction. My band-aids for the psychic wounds I know she’s taking as a mother unable to make the world safe.

That said, I need to get the meme engine back up again soon. Maybe it’s too soon, but I like to think laughter helps reduce hypertension and if that’s the best I can do for her, so be it.

If anyone has any suggestions, I'm open to them.

Just keep in mind, I send these to my mom, please keep it PG-13.