So the phone rings ...

It's my mom. At 9:00 on a Tuesday night. To tell me she's filing for bankruptcy and is worried that by being an authorized user on one of my credit cards* could have a negative impact on my own credit rating.

By filing for bankruptcy, she will have $500/month to help her meet her property taxes, utility bills, etc. My dad died in 1992 and left her with nothing but debt and a small life insurance policy (which went for the funeral). She has $20,000 equity left in the house from her reverse mortgage, social security and whatever I give her each month. That's it.

I already pay her medicare part B insurance premiums and her snow removal and help her with her little gifts -- that's $225/month over the course of a year. My kid sister and brother-in-law don't contribute anything, but they are enormously helpful driving her places and helping her keep up with the house. My older sister, who lives very well in Southern California, no longer gives my mother any gifts at all anymore -- not for her birthday, Christmas, or Mother's Day. She explains this by saying that now that she has remarried, with her new bridegroom approaching retirement, it wouldn't be fair or wise for her to spend money on her family that he doesn't spend on his.

I resent this. Not the money I give to my mother -- she gave me life -- but that my older sister can't see her way to pitching in.

My older sister is coming in to stay with my mom over Memorial Day weekend. I hope that she gets it that my mom needs help, and that my younger sister and I need help with her. My mom's house smells overwhelmingly of cat urine and she needs a new chimney. I have offered to pay my niece (a very industrious young lady) to go over there with a Rug Doctor carpet cleaner but my mom refuses. She's worried the machine will damage the rug. (As if the carpet isn't already ruined by Ethel the Cat's pee.) My brother-in-law is repairing the chimney.

But what about when my mom's refrigerator goes? Or if one of her cats gets ill? By filing for bankruptcy, my mother will be losing her credit cards and it goes without saying that she has no emergency fund.

I am so sick of worrying about money.

Remember the good old days, when the phone rang with good news?

* I had given her permission to charge $25/month on my American Airlines Citi Master Card but she kept going over so we agreed she should cut the card up and I give her gift cards instead.