After being abandoned by her mother at age eleven, a woman was raised solely by her father. Now 29 and the owner of the family home following her father's passing, her life was suddenly interrupted by a call from her estranged mother, who revealed she was terminally ill and asked to move back in to "fix things."
The woman declined the request, stating plainly, "You did not raise me. You left." Her mother responded with tears and accusations of cruelty, emphasizing that the woman was her only child.
The situation escalated days later when police arrived at her home after a neighbor reported an unresponsive woman on the front steps. It was her mother, who had apparently been there for hours with her suitcases, having potentially collapsed from exhaustion or a lapse in medication. Now hospitalized, authorities asked if the daughter was her emergency contact; she said no.
While she acknowledges a pang of guilt, she reflects on a lifetime of grieving for a mother who was alive but absent. Her resolution is firm: she will not open her door to someone who closed it on her first. She ends her story by confronting the central question herself: does this make her heartless?
