For four years I left my career, my apartment, and most of my own life behind to move in and care for my mother as her memory slowly disappeared, while my two sisters visited twice a year and told anyone who’d listen how “lucky” I was to “get to spend so much time with Mom,” and when she passed and the lawyer finally opened her will in front of all three of us, the first thing he read aloud wasn’t a dollar amount at all, it was a letter, written in my mother’s own handwriting, that neither of my sisters expected and that changed the entire room the moment he started reading it out loud.
I quit a job I’d spent twelve years building when my mother’s diagnosis came in, not because anyone asked me to, but because someone had to, and my sisters, Patricia and Diane, both had families, careers, “responsibilities” that made it impossible for them to be the ones to step away. I told myself I understood. I told myself it made sense. What I didn’t expect was how easily that sacrifice got rewritten into something smaller in their eyes over time.
“You’re so lucky you get all that quality time,” Patricia said once, while I was helping our mother relearn how to use a fork.— Patricia, to her sister
