Chapter 19: Anticipation
Six more days passed relatively uneventfully.
I worked most of those days and didn’t see much of either of my parents.
They continued going out together almost every night.
Then my mom received another email from someone pretending to be a member of a band she liked.
Once again, the fragile peace began to fracture.
My dad’s anger returned.
From my perspective, he became focused on the scammers themselves and on my mom’s decisions to
continue communicating with them.
I understood his frustration.
There were moments when my mom could appear completely like herself, only to turn around and become
absorbed in another message from someone pretending to be a celebrity or musician.
I could only imagine how confusing that must have been for him.
It was confusing for me too.
I found myself grieving for both of them.
My mom was still alive. She was still in the house with us.
And yet I felt as though I was already mourning her.
I continued trying to support my dad.
I reminded him that he wasn’t alone.
I reminded him that whatever was happening with my mom was beyond what we knew how to treat
ourselves.
And I encouraged him to stop reading the scammers’ messages and engaging with them. Every interaction
seemed to pull him further into his anger.
Eventually, my dad told me that he felt he had done enough.
He was exhausted.
He said that this wasn’t our problem anymore and that my mom had done this to herself.
I disagreed.
“Yes, she did this to herself, but we do not understand why.
I can tell you this: if I had walked away from my wife when she was at her lowest, I wouldn’t have what I have
today.
I would not have my children.
You would not have your grandchildren.
I will not tell you what to do, and I won’t pressure you either.
At the end of the day, she is still my mom.
She still raised me and sacrificed for me.”
My dad agreed.
The following day, we received news that my mom had been accepted into a treatment facility in Texas.
Finally, there was somewhere for her to go.
We have now reached the point when I first began writing this story: March 2024.
At the time, I had no idea how this story would end.
We were waiting to learn what came next with her treatment, and I didn’t know whether the mom I
remembered would ever truly return to us.
I was frightened by how dramatically she had changed.
Because my grandmother was living in assisted care with dementia, I even wondered whether we might be
seeing some kind of early cognitive decline in my mom.
I had no way of knowing.
Part of me hoped that medication was contributing to what we were seeing, or that she had experienced some
kind of psychiatric crisis from which treatment could help her recover.
I searched for explanations because I desperately wanted there to be an explanation.
And, more than anything, I wanted there to be a way back.
At that point, however, all I could do was keep moving forward one day at a time.