My mom left me for another man when I was 11, so my dad raised me alone. Now I’m 29, my dad’s gone, and the house is mine. Last week, my mom called out of nowhere. Said she was terminally ill and wanted to “fix things” and wanted to move back into my house. She added, “It would mean a lot to stay in the home I raised you in.” I refused and told her, “You didn’t raise me. You left.” She cried and said I was being cruel. That I’m her only child.

I didn’t think much of it until yesterday. The police showed up at my door and told me a neighbor had called. They said there was an unresponsive woman on my front steps. It was my mom. She’d been out there for hours, her bags still beside her. They think she collapsed from exhaustion or maybe from the meds she stopped taking.Now she’s in the hospital. They asked if I was her emergency contact. I said no. I felt a pang of guilt. But I’ve spent more years grieving a living mother than most people spend grieving after one dies. I’m not opening my door to someone who closed it on me first.