Missing Masked Mammaws

Mongoose,
My mom is past retirement age, has been vaccinated for COVID and still wears a mask everywhere. My wife, daughter, and I have been vaccinated but we don't wear masks. Of course, we were told that after the vaccinations, masks would no longer be needed...anyway, she refuses to come to our home unless we're wearing masks (in my own house) and we can't visit her house if unmasked. My daughter wants to see her mammaw and I'd love to see my mom, but she says this is just temporary and she doesn't want to chance anything until the virus is over. Do we give in to the masking or give up on sanity?

Dear Misses Masked Mammaw ,
This scenario you’ve described has, and is played out many times a day throughout the world, driving Great Pyramid-size wedges between families that 2 years ago were closer than green fuzz on 6 week-old bread. 

The most precious and finite resource a living human being has is time.  It’s the one thing you can’t store, loan, or add to. Each time the clock ticks is one less tick you get in this life. I’m not sure how old mammaw is but did you know that a 90 year old woman has a 1 in 8 chance of making it to 91? Meaning, Covid or not, there is roughly a 13% chance she will live another year. Time is definitely not on her side.  Again, time that you or her cannot bank, or bank on. 

I hate to sound callous, but we’re on day 546 of "15 days to slow the spread."  You cannot give someone something you don’t have. Read that again, you cannot give someone something you don’t have. Tell her you’ll get tested, remind her of the stats given earlier, let your daughter tell her how much she misses her, wear masks if you have to, do whatever it takes to keep yourself from being in the position of standing over a graveside regretting you wasted 546 days or 471,744,00 ticks you will never get back by trusting the science. 

Remember, it's the science that said "people are eating contaminated bats, but don’t worry, it can’t be transmitted between humans, no need to wear masks, wait, it  can be transmitted between humans but not deadly, wear a mask, wear 2 masks, shut it down cause everybody is dying,  get vaccinated and you won’t get sick and don’t have to wear a mask, get vaccinated so you don’t spread it, wear a mask if you’re vaccinated, you can still spread it if you’re vaccinated, you can still die if you’re vaccinated, take a booster that we think will work and by the way all of this is the unvaccinated idiots’ faults so we will mandate everyone get vaccinated because the unvaccinated are putting the vaccinated at risk."
​--MG