Even now, it feels like a foggy dream when my sister rang and began congratulating me: “Well, at last! Your boy’s gone and gotten married!”
I froze, the phone pressed to my ear. “What?” I managed to whisper. “Married? You must be mistaken. He’d have told me. I’m his mother, after all…”
But she wasn’t mistaken. Her own son had seen the pictures online—my boy in a sharp suit, a bride in white beside him, flowers everywhere, waiters, music, a grand reception. The caption read: “The happiest day of my life.”
I sat down. Right there in the middle of the kitchen. The kettle screamed, the pancakes cooled in the pan, and I just sat, numb. One thought pounded in my head: Why? Why hadn’t he even told me?
I’d had him late—thirty-one, nothing unusual now, but back then, the midwives called me an “elderly mother.” Ten years after he was born, his father was gone—a heart attack at work. Just like that. The two of us were left. I kept us going as best I could. Worked nights, denied myself everything so he’d want for nothing. No personal life, no rest—just him.
He grew up, finished university, moved into a rented flat. Lived his own life, and I didn’t interfere. Sometimes he’d drop by with fruit, tell me all was well. I was glad just to know he was thriving. Then one day, he brought Emily—a sweet, quiet girl, ten years his junior, kind and smiling. I liked her. I thought, “At last. Here’s the one who’ll be his family.”
They left, and I sat at the kitchen table, smiling to myself, imagining grandchildren. I was certain—if he’d introduced us, it was serious. And of course, if there was a wedding, he’d invite me.
But I was wrong.
When I rang him, he didn’t answer. Later, he called back as if nothing had happened. I kept my voice steady.
“Have you something you’d like to tell me?”
He hesitated. “Ah, you already know… Yes, we registered yesterday. Off on our honeymoon tomorrow. I meant to stop by…”
And he did—half an hour later, with cake, with flowers. Kissed my cheek. Sat down like it was nothing.
“There was a wedding,” he said. “But we kept it small. Just our crowd. You know how it is—music, dancing. It wouldn’t have been your sort of thing…” He said it so lightly, as though explaining why he hadn’t invited me to a pub gathering.
“Did Emily’s parents go?” I asked.
“Well… yes. But they’re not even forty yet…”
Something snapped inside me. “And I’m sixty. So I don’t fit the format, is that it?”
He looked down, quietly eating cake. I stared at him, wondering when we’d become strangers. I hadn’t expected a seat at the banquet—no need for their youthful revelry. But why not the registry office? Why had I learned of it from my sister, not him?
“We didn’t think,” he said when I asked.
Didn’t think. Do you know what’s worst in those words? Not anger, not hurt—just indifference. It simply hadn’t mattered. Slipped his mind. Never occurred to him.
And yet, for him, I’d been everything. Sat up nights when he was feverish. Carried heavy bags when money was tight. Scrubbed, cooked, took extra work evenings to ease his way. Never let myself be weak. Not once.
And he… just got married. Without me. Never occurred to him his mother might mind. Might ache. Might sit alone in a silent house, staring at old photos, wondering: Was I ever needed?
Now I sit and wonder: Had I not called, would he have told me at all? Or would he have carried on, silent, never mentioning the wedding, never deeming it worth sharing?
They say children owe us nothing. True. But is it normal—forgetting your own mother on the day they call “the happiest of your life”?
He left, and the house fell quiet. I didn’t blame him. Didn’t shout, didn’t make a scene. Just let him go.
Perhaps every parent faces a moment when they must admit: Your child is grown. And there’s no room left for you. But I never thought it would hurt this much.
