My mother wants to move in, and I am frightened I will become cruel to her

Dear Delyara, My mother is seventy-eight and can no longer safely live alone after several falls. My brother lives overseas, so everyone assumes she will move in with me. She assumes it too. She has already started talking about which bedroom she will use. I love my mother. I also know what happens when we share space. She comments on my weight, my marriage, my parenting, how I load a dishwasher, how much money we spend. During visits, I become seventeen within twenty-four hours. My husband says we can establish boundaries. He does not understand that boundaries with my mother are sentences she hears as rejection. Yesterday, she said, “I know I won’t be a burden because daughters look after mothers.” I smiled and changed the subject. The spare room is ten feet from my bedroom. I keep standing in the doorway imagining her slippers outside it, her television on all day, my irritation becoming visible in front of a woman whose body is already betraying her. I am afraid of refusing her. I am more afraid of accepting and discovering that duty can turn love into resentment so slowly that by the time either of us notices, we are living in the same house and avoiding each other.