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Once, she even offered him help in finding a room.
Eli flinched like she’d offered to chain him to something. “I can’t,” he politely protested.
“Why not?”
He looked at me, then back down. “Because I’d rather freeze than owe anyone.”
I don’t know if it was pride or fear. But my mom didn’t push.
She just nodded. “Okay. But dinner still stands.”
Once, she even offered him help in finding a room.
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I moved out after high school. Got a job. Started a life that looked fine from the outside.
Then cancer came for my mother. Subtle at first. Fatigue. Weight loss. A laugh that sounded thinner.
“Probably just my thyroid acting up, dear,” she’d say.
It wasn’t.
She was gone in under a year.
We didn’t get one last Christmas. Just a blurry fall full of doctors, silence, and watching the strongest person I knew disappear in pieces.
She was gone in under a year.
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By December, I was surviving. Sort of.
Showering, paying the rent, and just functioning.
But I was angry at everyone who still had their mom, and at myself for not being able to save mine.
