When I alighted from the bus, my eyes fell upon my mother, sitting on the pavement and begging. My husband and I were rooted to the spot in disbelief. Nobody had any inkling of this.
I was forty-three at the time, my mother sixty-seven. We lived in the same city, yet our homes lay at opposite ends. Like so many elderly folk, my mother needed constant care, but she steadfastly refused to move in with me for one reason aloneher home sheltered four cats and three dogs. She also fed every stray soul in the neighbourhood. Every penny I gave her was spent on medicine, animal food, and the like.
I would always bring her whatever she needed, fully aware that she would not part with her money for her own food or medicine. Not long ago, my husband and I visited a friends house and decided, for convenience, to leave our car behind and return home by bus. Imagine my utter shock when, upon descending at our stop, I saw my own mother sat upon the cold stone, hand stretched for coins. I felt completely lost. My husband, equally astonished, knew full well that we set aside money each month for my mother from our household budget.
Of course, he began to question what I had truly been spending the money on. It became clear my mother had been gathering funds for her beloved animalsto buy them food and pay for their vaccinations.
All of this seems so pitiful, yet what would you think if you came upon your own mother in such a state? What stories would friends, family, and acquaintances begin to tell? They would surely judge that I, a daughter of little worth, had abandoned my mother, leaving her to waste away. Now I search the roads for her, looking in every shadowed corner. I know that even my angry pleas have not moved hershe goes on, though she hides herself even more cunningly from me now.
