Grading and Ongoingness

Still quite a few students haven't handed in their final papers yet and my grading deadline is now LOOMING. Sometimes it feels as though I care more about getting some of these kids to pass the class than they do themselves. Perhaps I should be more encouraging, but I'm utterly spent, my exhortation engine is empty. My Mother is still in the ICU back in Indiana (landscape of nightmares long since escaped), has occasionally seemed to possibly regain some kind of modest consciousness, but is still not expected to survive the coming days. I'm stuck here, she's stuck in some weird unreachable in-between, everything is stuckness, it stinks.