I’m afraid she’ll stop seeing me as her mother and start seeing me as someone who needs to be taken care of.
Please help me understand what’s happening before we tell her.
Love, Grandma.
I read the letter three times.
Then I remembered something.
Two months earlier, my mother had forgotten my birthday.
I had been angry.
I’d told her, “Mom, you’re getting careless. You used to remember everything.”
She had apologized repeatedly.
I hadn’t realized how frightened she already was.
“Why was she screaming tonight?” I asked Daniel.
He swallowed.
“She found an envelope of old family photographs. I opened it because she asked me to look for Grandpa’s picture. But when she saw a photograph of you as a little girl, she couldn’t remember who you were.”
He paused.
“She thought someone had taken her daughter away.”
My mother suddenly began crying again.
