Gaster's Exempla (1924), No. 191, preserves one of the strangest stories of filial piety in rabbinic tradition. Rabbi Ishmael's mother came to him with a request. She wanted to wash his feet and then drink the water. It was an act of extreme devotion — a mother honoring the greatness of her son by consuming the very dust he had walked through.
Rabbi Ishmael refused. It was not that he rejected her love. He felt it — but he could not allow her to humble herself in that way. A Jewish mother's dignity was not something any son, even the greatest Torah scholar, had the right to accept as a gift at the cost of her honor.
The Talmud in Kiddushin 31b records that when rabbis asked for rulings on how to honor a mother beyond the ordinary, the sages did not always give easy answers. Honoring a parent is not a fixed ceremony. Sometimes it means accepting what they offer. Sometimes it means refusing what they offer, because the offering itself would cost them what you are trying to give them back.
The sages collect similar stories here — of Rabbi Tarfon, who bent down to let his mother climb on him like a step when she wanted to mount her bed, and of others who walked the line between receiving their mother's love and protecting her honor.
The hardest kind of respect is the kind that says no and means I see you too clearly for that.