Now that I live with my mom, my preferred mode of communication with her is by text. We’re in each other’s faces enough these days. Her first messages come in the morning, before sunrise, when she hears my heavy tread from her suite downstairs in our Vancouver Special, a mainstay structure in the city’s residential areas. Once deemed boxy and cookie cutter, the architectural equivalent of a Honda Element, Vancouver Specials are now touted for their ability to accommodate two households, one on each floor. I’m in the kitchen, making my eight-year-old’s school lunch, when my phone buzzes and my mother puts in her breakfast request.
Until she started dialysis at the end of 2022, my widowed, then seventy-one-year-old mother managed to be both active and sedentary, gamely driving in her SUV to a slate of appointments, school pickups for my daughter, and mahjong nights. The arrangement had served us well since we all moved in together in 2021, a decision made with my wife’s approval. My mom had been on her own since my brother married and moved out, right before the COVID-19 pandemic.