Some thoughts on filial piety

My aunt came and stayed for four days around new year's.

I had invited her because the new year's is the anniversary of her son's death and she said she didn't want to be alone during that time. Out of desperation, and acting on past experience, I refused to put her up at home and instead arranged for her to stay in a hut next door: that way at least at night -- and in the morning, until, driven out by hunger I emerged from my bedroom -- I could be left in peace. Even so, she came over at daybreak and laid a siege to me till late at night, talking at me incessantly.

Most of the talk may have seemed harmless enough: she mainly repeated old jokes and anecdotes (all of which I had heard countless times already) or recounted to me major news events she heard on the radio or read in the press (which, of course, by then I had heard or read myself); but she disturbed my work -- she'd talk to me even though she could see I was doing something; and, worse, disturbed my peace -- those moments when I sat outside to enjoy the balmy weather and the peace and quiet of my garden.

It would have been alright, I suppose, if I had been allowed to ignore her words -- tune them out, somehow; but my aunt expected me to hear her words, process them, and make a reply, doing which placed on me a tremendous amount of pressure. I had spent years of sacrifice and hard work to cut myself off from people who bore me. Why must it be my duty now to be bored by my own aunt?

It is a truth generally held that it is my filial duty to help my aunt; the logic of this argument says that I owe her, in her gradually more and more helpless old age, the care she'd given me when I was a helpless child. Very well, then: I am happy to help her financially; and, further, I am prepared to sacrifice a great amount of my time in just helping her accomplishing ordinary life tasks -- drive her places, help her shop and move things, arrange her drivers, show her how to pay her bills, etc. But does it really need to be my duty to suffer her incessant talking?

Can there really be such a thing as right to be entertained? Or the corresponding duty to entertain?

More importantly: why does my aunt need somebody to talk at in order to feel better?

It's worse of course when she offers life advice: it is she who needs my help, not I who needs hers; what makes her think that I am remotely interested in her advice? Or wish to explain anything about my personal life?