**Diary Entry**
I’m seventy now, alone as a lost penny. A burden to my own daughter.
“Darling, please come over this evening—I don’t think I can manage alone…”
“Mum, I’m drowning in work! Stop nagging. Fine, I’ll come.”
I stood by the telephone, clutching the receiver, tears rolling down my cheeks. Burning with hurt. With grief. With the realisation that I’d become nothing but a nuisance to my only child. I remembered raising Emily alone, giving everything I had. Never once did I deny her anything. Always the best—all for her sake. Maybe that was my mistake. I spoiled her too much, loved her too deeply, believed too stubbornly that her happiness would bring my own.
When Emily was eleven, a man came into my life. For the first time in years, I felt like a woman again. But Emily threw such a fit I had to let him go. Though my heart screamed, I chose her. Always her. And now… now I’m seventy. Alone. My body aches, my strength is spent, and the one person I thought I could rely on—my own daughter—brushes me off like an irritating fly.
Emily’s been married twenty years. She has three children, but I hardly see them. Why? I don’t know. Maybe they’ve been told I’m a bother too.
“Mum, what now?” she snapped as she barged in.
“The doctor says I need injections… you’re a nurse, couldn’t you help?”
“What, commute here all week? Are you joking?”
“Emily, the pavements are icy—I can’t even make it to the clinic…”
“Then pay me if you want me to bother coming! No one works for free!”
“I don’t have the money…”
“Brilliant! Ask someone else!” The door slammed behind her.
The next morning, I left two hours early—plodding through the snow, gripping the referral slip, whispering, “You can do this, just get there…” The tears came anyway. From the pain. The loneliness. And those words I’d never forget: *You’re a burden.*
At the clinic, a young woman stopped me. “Let her through! Are you alright?”
“No, love. It’s not the pain. It’s just… life.”
She sat with me, listened. I told her everything. Strangely, it was easier talking to a stranger than my own daughter. Her name was Sophie. Turned out, she lived nearby. After that day, she visited often. Brought groceries, helped with medicines. Just listened.
On my birthday, Sophie came alone. Emily didn’t even call.
“I had to come,” Sophie said. “You remind me so much of my mum. Being with you feels like home.”
That’s when I knew—a stranger had given me more than the child I’d raised with all my love.
We grew close. Sophie took me to her cottage, celebrated holidays, drove me into the countryside. Then came the hardest, yet simplest decision—I signed the flat over to her. She refused at first. “I don’t want anything,” she insisted. But I knew. She wasn’t here for money. She was just here. When no one else was.
Eventually, I moved in with her—living alone became too hard. We sold my flat to avoid legal trouble from Emily and tried to forget.
A year later, Emily appeared. Cold. Furious.
“You gave away the flat to an outsider! You humiliated me! It should’ve been mine! I wish you were dead!”
Sophie’s husband threw her out before she could yell another word.
So there it is. Strangers became family. Sophie was more a daughter than the one I’d carried under my heart. And that love—the kind that asks for nothing—means nothing to them now. Because time is short. Because I’m in the way. Because a mother’s love isn’t an asset. Just a feeling. And feelings… well, who needs those anymore?
