*In the haze of a half-remembered dream, the words echoed: “Couldn’t care for her own mother, but plenty of energy to drag me through court!”*
When I was a little girl, my grandmother was my entire world. She raised me, taught me life’s hard lessons, kissed my scraped knees when I fell, and held me close whenever my mother vanished—again—chasing some new illusion of “happiness.” Mum was always flitting off with one man or another, leaving no room in her heart or energy for me. She’d reappear like a visitor, stay a day or two with empty words and distant eyes, then disappear once more.
But Gran… Gran was everything. Mother, friend, foundation. She gave me all she had—her time, her soul, her last pound. Even after I grew up and left for university in York, she remained my closest, dearest person. But fate, cruel and capricious, had other plans. Soon, she fell gravely ill, needing constant care. I dropped my studies and rushed home. Money was tight, so I begged Mum for help. Every plea was met with wails and excuses:
*”I can barely stand myself… My blood pressure, my heart, my joints—you’ve no idea how hard it is! I could end up disabled!”*
Day after day, I wondered—why say all this if she had no intention of helping? Gran, seeing my confusion, once whispered wearily:
*”She’s building herself an alibi. So no one can accuse her later of abandoning her own mother. See? She was ‘too ill’ to care.”*
And she was right. Mum never missed a chance to play the frail martyr—until Gran signed the flat over to me. Then, after Gran passed, something miraculous happened. Mum, suddenly bursting with vitality, forgot every ache and pain and stormed the courts. She claimed I’d exploited Gran, that she’d been “out of her mind,” and the deed should be void. The avalanche began—paperwork, hearings, claims. I couldn’t fathom how she managed it all, when just weeks before she’d barely could walk. Now she dashed between solicitors with the vigour of a woman half her age.
Each day revealed her fury, her greed. Where was this strength when Gran needed her? Where was this energy when I, a twenty-year-old girl, struggled to care for a dying woman with no money, no help? Back then, Mum just sobbed down the phone about her own suffering. Now? She was a whirlwind—spinning tales to anyone who’d listen about betrayal, stolen inheritance, her *”poor mother robbed of her rightful home.”*
Not once did she sit by Gran’s bedside. Not one night did she keep watch. Not a single pill did she buy. It was all on me. Only I knew how Gran gritted her teeth against the pain, how she faded in and out, how she begged for water in the dark. Only I held her cold hand at the end, heard her last breath, wept over her still body…
When Gran signed the flat to me, she looked into my eyes and said:
*”I don’t want your mother getting a single penny. You were there—only you. This is yours. You’ve earned it.”*
I don’t want revenge. I don’t crave war. But I won’t let anyone—not even my own mother—trample the wishes of the woman who gave me everything. I’ll fight—not for bricks and mortar, but for memory. For love. For justice.
Let her file lawsuits. Let her spin her stories. I know the truth. And as long as I have a voice, I won’t let it be silenced.
