I thought I would comfort my mother by suggesting she come up the evening before her appointment so that she could rest. Otherwise she would have to leave her home at 5:30am, drive a long distance, spend all day with paperwork and consultations and lots of waiting. Then drive back again.

My mother said thank you very much, but this and that and the other. Horses must be watered, dogs must be walked. And I pointed out that someone else could do these things. She does not feel that other people are reliable. She is not a delegator. I pushed...I told her that the horses would be without water for very little time if they were without water at all and she pushed back in the very Southern way, saying that if I didn't mind she would rather drive up on the morning of her appointments.

I was very disappointed. I thought of a thousand reasons that she was wrong. I thought that she needed to learn to share the load. I thought that she had other reasons that she wasn't able to face up to...But none of those thoughts matter. They have no basis in reality and they are a kind of "grasping at straws with the mind."
My mother is an adult and able to make her own choices. My questioning her choices is simply a judgement of her rationale - which is not very nice. (I'm being Southern here, so "not very nice" translates to "controlling".) 

Most people can relate to the decision to drive longer with less stops to get home to one's own bed. Most people empathize with those who need a routine to hold on to when they are in the midst of something scary and unfamiliar.I couldn't see that at the time of this phone conversation because I had already decided what was best and I had my "Queen Virginia" blinders on.

I apologized later for the mental wrestling match. And I laughed at myself for that self-righteous feeling I had when I was ticking off the list of "reasons my mother is wrong" in my head. Because after all that, I realized that the person that I was trying to comfort was me.