When I was eleven years old, my mother packed a single suitcase, kissed my forehead, and walked out of our house. She said she’d be back in a few days. She never came back.
For years, I told myself she was gone for good, and I learned to live around that emptiness. My father raised me alone — a quiet man who carried his heartbreak in silence. I watched him fill the space she left behind with long work hours, burnt dinners, and small, stubborn acts of care. I learned to do the same — to keep going, even when something inside me was missing.
As I grew older, I convinced myself I didn’t need her. When friends talked about their mothers, I smiled and changed the subject. When people asked, I said she’d left — and that it didn’t matter. But deep down, it always did.
Then, twenty-two years later, her name appeared on my phone. For a moment, I thought it was a mistake. I hadn’t seen or heard from her since the day she walked away. But it was her voice — older now, trembling, fragile.
She told me she was ill. Her voice broke as she explained that her time was running short and that she wanted to spend her remaining days “in the home she raised me in.”
The same home she once left behind.
I didn’t think. I just said, “No.”
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