When I Got Off the Bus, I Saw My Mum Sitting on the Pavement Begging. My Husband and I Were Stunned. No One Knew About This. I’m 43, and my mum is 67. We live in the same city, but on opposite sides. Like many elderly people, my mum needs constant supervision, but she refuses to move in with me for one reason—she has four cats and three dogs in her flat. She also feeds every stray animal in the neighbourhood. Every penny I give her goes on medicine or animal food. I bring her groceries myself, because I know she won’t spend any money on food or medicine for herself. Recently, my husband and I visited a friend at his house and decided to leave our car at his and take the bus home. Imagine my shock when I got off the bus and saw my mum sitting on the pavement, begging for money. I didn’t know what to think. My husband was stunned too. He knew I took money for Mum from our family budget. Naturally, he wondered where the money was really going. It turned out my mum was collecting money for her cats and dogs—for their food and vaccines. All this sounds tragic, but what would you think if you saw your own mother like this? What would family, friends, and neighbours think? Of course, they’d believe that I, such a worthless daughter, had abandoned my mum and left her to perish. Now I go looking for my mum on every street. I know she hasn’t stopped, even though I shouted at her—she’s just gotten better at hiding from me.

When I stepped off the double-decker, the cobblestones seemed to waver like waves and there, amidst the bustling market square, I glimpsed my own mother sitting on the ground, cap upturned, begging for change. My husband and I stood frozen, as if submerged underwater. Not a soul had told us of this.

Im forty-three now; my mother, Edith, is sixty-seven. We live in the same city, though worlds apartshe in the faded row houses on one end of Birmingham, me at the other. Like many elderly folk, Edith needs constant keeping an eye on. But she refuses to move in with me for just one reasonher flat is overrun with four cats and three scruffy dogs, each with a tangled name. Shes famed on her street for feeding every stray or mongrel that crosses her path. Every single pound I give her melts away on animal kibble and old bottles of pills.

So, I haul groceries and medication to her, knowing full well shed rather part with her last bit of supper than let her pets go without. Just the other day, my husband, Colin, and I were at a mates for tea on the other side of town. We decided to leave our car behind and catch the bus backa whim, a decision barely worth remembering. Yet, when the bus doors spat us out on the high street, there was Edith, hat in hand, collecting coins from strangers. I felt rooted to the spot; Colins face was an echo of my own shock. He, at least, knew that I always dipped into our savings just so Mum would be all right.

He wanted to know, sensibly, how the money vanished. Turned out Edith was hoarding coins for tins of pet food, piles of biscuit, vaccinations for each old rescue shed welcomed in.

It all sounds so tragic. But imaginetruly imaginefinding your own mother crumpled and begging in public. What would the neighbours think or the family? How easy to believe I was a useless, negligent daughter whod simply let her mum waste away. Now, each day, I pace the streets, weaving through dreamlike paths in hopes of finding her before she fades. My pleas echo after her, but Edith only hides in stranger corners now, as though escaping through the cracks of some surreal city neither of us quite recognises.