Prisoner of the past.

The camera image is clear and the screen resolution is detailed when I Skype call her; which means I can see the worry lines on her forehead and the dark circles under her eyes as clear as day and I wish there was a camera filter, popular on Snapchat or whatever the kids use nowadays, that could blur both our faces to a fuzzy cuteness -bunny ears and all.

But she's distressed again today and even over the internet, her worry is contagious. So I start to worry too. I knew quarantine would be hard for many but for my mother after spending two months cooped up in the family home, (mandated by the health service because of underlying health conditions) with an emotionally absent husband, a 30 year-old kitchen and worn out carpet, it really has taken its emotional toll.

She starts the familiar dialogue again now, the same repeated words, almost verbatim, that I've been hearing for over a week, since realizing daily calls were an absolute necessity.

"I've made so many mistakes. " She says, her voice an octave higher than normal. " I should have done better. I should have done more. I should have..."

I don't hear the rest, as the connection falters but I know how the sentence will end. Whatever decision she had made in the past, no matter how small, she was now berating herself for, mulling over, regretting , drowning herself in guilt. Any and all past decisions are used as weapons to beat herself with, and for a week now, no matter what I say or what I do, the cycle of inner turmoil is unbreakable.

"I should have listened to your dad and got the carpet changed when we had the chance. " She continues on the verge of tears.

"Don't worry about that mom. We can sort that after the lockdown. You still have so much to be grateful for." I respond, trying to inject some positive thinking.

"I know. And I can't even be grateful. I should have shown gratitude before, I should have spent more time with you kids. I should have...."

The connection pauses again and I helplessly watch her worried face, which is now pressed into her hands, freeze.

When the connection comes back, I try out a phrase I had picked up from a self-help book, about the past being a prison.

"Mom," I say kindly "the past is meant to be a lesson not a prison. We all make mistakes and it's important to learn from them and then move on. "

I watch her troubled face on the screen and wonder if the connection has frozen again. But then I realize, she's looking at the screen but not looking at me.

She's no longer present.

Her sad eyes, which once used to be full of life and had emitted a kind maternal glow; eyes that were once full of warmth, wisdom and framed with well- used laughter lines , were now distant and empty, glazed over with newly formed tears.

It wasn't the connection; she was stuck in the past again, frozen in some lost moment of time.

She was still in her prison, I realize, with a foreboding sense of sadness.

And I didn't have the tools to get her out.