Ever since the children started calling me every day, I can’t shake the feeling—it’s not about care, it’s about inheritance.
Margaret Whitmore stands by the window, gazing pensively at the damp winter garden outside. Her flat is silent, save for the steady ticking of the clock. Long retired, her thoughts keep drifting back to her grown-up children—two daughters and a son. Today is her birthday. Will they come to visit? Or at least remember and call? Though, if she’s honest, Margaret has held no illusions for years.
“Thirty years ago, my husband walked out, leaving me with three little ones,” she reflects bitterly. “He couldn’t handle the responsibility—the endless crying, the mess, the penny-pinching. I was only thirty, the older ones just starting school, the youngest still in nappies. I had to feed them, clothe them, raise them…”
Margaret didn’t break. She worked any job she could—cleaner, shop assistant, childminder—just to keep them afloat. There was no time for her own life. All she wanted was for them to have everything, to never feel less than their peers.
Only now, looking back, does she wonder if she was wrong to prioritise money over simple warmth. The children needed more than meals and clothes—they needed a mother beside them, reading stories, speaking kind words.
At the time, she had no one to lean on. Her husband left as easily as if he’d erased them from his life. “That was his choice,” she thinks now, without resentment. “And I don’t blame him. Everyone walks their own path.”
The children grew up, flew the nest. Each built their own life, their own families. She stayed behind. Her pension is modest, but Margaret has always saved “for a rainy day”—for them. Wedding funds, deposits for flats, futures for grandchildren…
Yet now, years later, she’s left with savings, a home—and a hollow ache inside. There’s no one even to talk to.
A week ago, she felt a sharp pain in her chest. The ambulance took her to hospital, and after tests, the doctors delivered news that sent fear crashing through her: a serious diagnosis, an uncertain future.
The staff contacted her family. Then came the miracle—all three children rushed to the hospital almost at once.
Her roommate even remarked, “You’re so lucky! Such devoted children, never leaving your side…”
Margaret only gave a thin smile in return. She knows them too well to be fooled.
After her discharge, the calls started—daily.
“Mum, how are you feeling?”
“Mum, do you need anything?”
“Mum, have you thought about writing a will? Just to avoid complications later…”
It all sounds caring, but there’s a stiffness beneath the words. No real worry, the kind you can’t fake. Margaret feels it—this isn’t about love, or missing her. It’s about the money. Her two-bedroom flat in the city centre. The tidy savings she spent her life building for them.
Her heart aches—has everything really come down to this?
Lately, she’s been thinking more than she has in years. Staring at the dark windows of neighbouring houses, she realises—her old age isn’t what she imagined. She pictured evenings by the fireplace, reading to grandchildren, welcoming her children for holidays… Instead, there’s emptiness, and scheduled calls laced with greed.
A thought forms, wild and unsettling: what if she left her savings to charity? The flat, perhaps, to her neighbour Eleanor—the one who’s checked in on her for years, brought groceries, dusted the shelves, asked, “How are you today, love?” without a single hidden motive.
She hasn’t decided yet. But deep down, Margaret knows—love can’t be bought with gifts, flats, or savings. Love either exists, or it doesn’t.
Life is short. And old age—just one.
If she must spend it alone, then at least let her final acts be true—not dictated by duty to those who forgot her when she needed their warmth most.
