My name's Dom. My wife and I have been arguing about putting my mother away in a home lately than this happened...

I'll confess. I've always been a bit of a Mama's boy. But whaddya gonna do, I'm siciliano and I'm an only son. That's just the way it is. So when my Dad died a couple of years ago and Mama informed us she'd be moving in I welcomed her with open arms. My wife Jill on the other hand was of a different mind.
"Are you ****ing mad?!?!" she exploded, spittle lodging in my eye.
"Now hold on baby," I started before I was hit with a dizzying combination of, "your ****ing mother's insane," and "I don't want her in my house," followed up with a, "I don't wanna taste her ****ing sauce either all day!"
Yeah, the sauce. The sauce. I guess Mama was going senile or whatever the **** you call it. I'm a simple pizza guy like my Dad and uncles. Give me a beer and a football game and an eggplant parm and I'm happier than a pig in slop.
But the past few years as Mama started to slip she became obsessed with an old box of recipes she got from her mother who got it from her mother and well, you know what I mean. But it was her spaghetti sauce, well we call it gravy, but a pig by any other name. Yeah that ****ing sauce recipe became an obsession with Mama.
We'd come over to Mama's house on West 3rd street on Sunday afternoons and she'd immediately corner Jill in the steamy kitchen.
"Ya gotta try my sauce, Jill," Mama would insist. Jill tried to grin and bear it but she would always corner me in return and complain Mama's latest batch of gravy tasted like Boston marathon ass.
"She's my Mom, Jill," I tried to explain.
"Yeah? And what the **** am I, the **** boy?" she rhetoricized at me. "No! I'm your ****ing wife, Dom! Till death do us part, for better or worse, but when I agreed to that I didn't agree to deal with Mama's passive agressive bull****," she scream whispered at me.
"Whoah! Whoah!" I tried to calm her. "I get it. We'll figure something out."
But that never happened. Even my Dad was scared of her.
"She's a changed for the worser. Always in that church with that new priest. The one with the glass eye and the lazy eye. Mi fa venire la tremarella!" Dad said grabbing my hand in both his. My father lived to 83 and in all that time I never once saw him scared. Or hysterical. He pulled me closer and whispered one word, "malocchio".
A couple of days ago I went by the church and saw the father.
"Your mother's special," he said. "To hold on you must let go."
Then he held both my hands and I felt my blood run cold.
I tried to ignore his eyes. Just like Dad said; one glass and one lazy as an old cat.
"Now go my son, and don't worry about your mother, the lord will provide," he assured me.
Back in the sunshine I couldn't quite get the world into focus. I vaguely wished I still smoked cigarettes.
I was gonna tell Jill about my visit but that was the night Pop's heart gave out and Mama's arrival came hot on his hearse's heels.
Things only got worse after Mama moved in. I really tried with Jill and even agreed to go to counseling.
"His mother is a religious fanatic," she complained.
"Perhaps you can find common ground," Doctor Mufasto suggested. "You're a catholic yourself Jill. Why not offer to go to mass with your mother-in-law?"
My eyebrows raised. And here I'm thinking I'm headed for divorce court. Ain't that some ****?
Jill swallowed some bile and said, "I could try, I suppose."
Well, that was a mistake.
"No!" Mama screamed. "You not going to any church with me! What do you know about that?!? The priest he purify me. That's not for you!"
Finally Jill had had enough.
"You don't know what it's like, Dom! I'm stuck in the house with Dorothy all day and now your Mama, on top of it?!?
She's sick, Dom! Sicko! She belongs in a home. When she's here all she does is speak to herself in Italian and cook gravy. And then while that swill simmers she'll sit at the coffee table staring at old photos!"
"Well, she's old, babe. She just lost my Pop. They were together like forever. I'm all she's got."
"And you're never here. You're in the pizza parlor all day and most of the night. Look, I know you provide Dom, and I love you for it. But your Mama is playing you Dom. She doesn't want anybody to be happy. She keeps telling me crazy things too!"
"Like what?" I asked reluctantly. I felt like I was on thin ice.
"She keeps saying people in the bible lived to be nine hundred years if they sacrificed for God," and then she gives me a dirty look like I'm a ****ing satan worshipper.
"You sure you're not exaggera-"
The slap was unforgiving and sobering. It was followed by tears. Jill held me tight and sobbed a long time. Then she inhaled deep. She took her face off my chest and looked up at me deadpan.
"It's her or me, Dom. I will take Dorothy and leave, you know I will."
I took a deep breath of my own. I didn't want to get divorced. I loved my wife. I loved my Mama but, well I couldn't help but think to myself what a relief it would be to have her somewhere where she could be cared for properly.
"We'll find a good place for her," I promised Jill.
Sunrise crossed her tear stained beauty.
"I love you Dom," she said.
I spoke to my cousin Stan and he was able to pull some strings to get Mama a spot at a real nice place. Expensive as hell but so is divorce if ya get my drift.
That last full day Jill was all smiles.
"Just one more day and a wake up and we're free," Jill whispered.
Then she did something we hadn't done since Mama moved in and I knew I had pulled back from the abyss just in the nick of time.
Mama made breakfast that morning and I was surprised at how accepting of the situation she had become.
"You are my son. My son. That is forever. I spoke to the father and he brought me peace. He helped me understand, and now I think today I will try my gravy one more time and, hey, it's up to god."
God I hated to see Mama like this. And worser, I hated to smell that gravy. Today though was somehow inviting. There was a different scent.
"Smells good, Ma," I said relieved not to be lying to my Mama.
Mama smiled and said, "You got to work. It's gonna be all ok. You see!"
That day I received a strange text from Jill around lunchtime.
Jill: I couldn't resist the gravy Dom I'm sorry I di
There was no punctuation, no emoji bull****. Maybe she got interrupted making a joke?
I had the baseball game on and I was making pizza dough; life was looking up. Can't resist the gravy? That's a laugh!
Then two hours later I got another message.
Jill: Mama's dead - come home
I almost got in a car accident on Avenue U on the way home. Jesus, Mama was dead. I met the paramedics at the door. They were taking Mama out with a sheet over her. I asked them to stop and let me say goodbye.
One of the paramedics said, "We gotta get her to the-"
But he was interrupted by his partner, a tall guy with strabismus.
"Let him look. It's his mother."
Jill met me outside.
"Take a look Dom, Say goodbye to your Mama," she advised.
I removed the sheet. Her face was not placid.
"Mighta been a stroke," the tall guy said.
Mama didn't look like Mama. And for a second her face got out of focus and I saw something infinitely lonely. Infinitely sad like a million last days of summer. Then it suddenly swam back into focus and I said, "Bye Mama," then leaned down and kissed her forehead.
"How sweet," Jill said.
I got dizzy again and thought I smelled Jill's perfume then something sour.
"Okay pal," the tall paramedic said. He fixed the sheet and they took Mama away.
Jill was great throughout the whole ordeal. Making arrangements. Standing by my side and graciously receiving all of Mama's mourners. It was like she had suddenly discovered a newfound and profound love for my mother. She kept telling me while we rode in the limousine to the cemetery on Long Island, "It's okay honey, I know how much you love your Mama, I know, I know, shhhhh. It's a gonna be all right."
They put Mama's body in the crypt. I'm not sure if I believe in heaven and hell. I try to take it one day at a time and to be honest with baseball season coming and Jill in a great mood I was looking forward to calm seas.
About a week later I was drinking a cup of Lavazza while looking through Mama's photo album when something caught my eye.
I noticed a picture behind a picture.
It was very old. Black and white. A picture I didn't recognize from long ago but close by. It was from when Mama was in high school. Before she met Pop. And she was with another girl in the same catholic school uniform and a boy in a Varsity football jacket that said, Midwood Hornets. He and my Mama were making moon eyes at each other!
And there was something else; he looked strangely familiar. So familiar but before I could ruminate on the resemblance any further I felt icy hands fall upon on my shoulders.
I gasped.
It was only Jill. She laughed, "What a scaredy-cat you are, eh?"
She gave me a kiss on the mouth and then spied the photo I had discovered.
"AHHHH! My GOD!!" Jill screamed like fan girl. "Danny Silver! I should have married Danny. Everything would have been different. If only he were catholic!"
Then I noticed something else in the picture, something I hadn't noticed before somehow. In the background of the soda shop, staring right into the camera. It was a familiar face, a deeply lined face with a prominent brow sporting one glass eye and one lazy eye. And he wore a collar. A priest's collar.
Forgive me father, for I have sinned.


Source.