At seventy-eight I was doing just fine on my own. I kept a garden, drove myself to church, and made my own decisions, thank you very much. So when my daughter Claire started insisting I move into Rosewood Care Home, I was baffled and, frankly, insulted.
‘I don’t need a home, Claire. I’m not sick,’ I told her. And I wasn’t. But she was immovable. She’d already toured the place, filled out the paperwork, reserved a room with a window facing east because she knew I liked the morning sun. She just would not tell me why.
‘It’s better this way, Mom,’ was all she’d say, and her eyes would fill and she’d change the subject. I thought maybe she wanted my house. I thought maybe I’d become a burden she was too polite to name. Those thoughts kept me up at night and made me colder to her than I’d ever been.
I moved in because she begged me to, but I punished her with my silence. Our phone calls got short. When she visited, I was stiff and unforgiving. Months went by like that, and the distance between us felt like the great sorrow of my old age.
Then one evening, a nurse named Deborah, who had grown fond of me, sat down beside me in the common room after the others had gone to bed. ‘Ellen,’ she said gently, ‘I think you should know something your daughter won’t tell you herself.’
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