DEAR MISS MANNERS: I have returned to my childhood home to be with my beloved mother, whose days are numbered. What I have never told her is that she has a grandson -- I fathered a boy six years ago. She knows nothing of the child or its mother, who is not in my life anymore.
As my mother is very frail and at times confused, do you feel it would be a benefit or a detriment to share this news with her?
GENTLE READER: If the pleasure of knowing she has descendants would outweigh any confusion or disdain for the circumstances surrounding them, then tell your mother. But if it would cause anguish in your final days together, then perhaps do not.
In either case, while Miss Manners does not wish to get involved in a pronoun argument, she would gently suggest that you use another one to describe your child -- rather than “it.”