Thandiwe D. Watts-Jones has a nice little piece in the Westchester section of today’s NYT about her aging mother’ habit of hoarding things:

She must save everything. In the pile of dust I had gathered with a
broom, she bent down to pick out, dust off, a single paper clip. The
boxes of them in the desk drawer, the metal containers of them on top
of the desk and the kitchen table do not allow her to leave it in the
dirt.

Sheets of used foil, used paper towels to be recycled, I
understand. But then there are the Styrofoam trays that meat, sometimes
vegetables come packaged in, rising up the wall above the toaster. The
freezer looks as if it belongs to someone who once came close to death
from starvation. It is forcefully packed, tight as drum skin, and it
never changes between visits. Can it be that she never takes anything
from it to eat, or is this state of rigor renewed again and again?

      She wants to do something, to push against the clutter and chaos, but her short visits with her mother do not provide sufficient time for the delicate work of cajoling her to let go of the useless and unused.  And she does not want to give things up, as she comes to understand:

I offer to make a dent, a small one, in a single counter. It’s the
one cluttered with sample size bottles of Lubriderm and Eucerin, a
large pump bottle of Estée Lauder lotion, tubes of hand cream, a jar of
Peter Pan peanut butter, adhesive tape, an empty Cingular Wireless
phone box and, most prolific, plastic bags folded neat and flat into
64ths, some bunched in a pile with rubber bands at the front of the
counter and others overflowing from a plastic container, hundreds
maybe. You can’t see the can opener unless you pull the bags forward to
reveal it. How easy, I thought, to put all the plastic bags in a
shopping bag and put them in a pantry corner.

“Just leave me alone,” she finally yells, after I offer to move the bags.

“I’m just trying to be helpful.”

“I know, but you’re nagging me,” she says.

I was done.

  She backs off and lets her be.  Instead of imposing her sense of order on her mother, she tries to see through her eyes:

I’ve learned so much from this teacher, most of all the love of
learning. But now, she is being swallowed in the proliferation of
mundane objects, paper, plastic and metal.

Or perhaps the word is comforted.

    Watts-Jones made me think of my own struggles with my mother, when she was dying of cancer and I was unsure of how to proceed.  I made mistakes of overstepping boundaries at times but occasionally was able to step back as Watts-Jones suggests.   And I am reminded once again of passage 4.18 from the Analects:

The Master said: "In serving your mother and father, admonish them gently.  If they understand, and yet choose not to follow your advice, deepen you reverence without losing faith.  And however exhausting this may be, avoid resentment.

     Watts-Jones does just that.