I was five when my mother left me at Aunt Carol’s, promising it would be “just a week or two.” Those weeks became nearly twenty years. Postcards arrived from Europe—short notes, rushed handwriting, photos of her smiling with strangers. Eventually, I realized she wasn’t coming back.
Aunt Carol and Uncle Jim raised me with love, but the ache of being left behind stayed. Then, at twenty-one, my mother called out of nowhere, asking to see me. We met, and she confessed she’d chosen a man who didn’t want kids and convinced herself I was better off without her.
Rebuilding was slow, awkward, and painful, but we tried. Years later, when she became sick, I cared for her. In those final months, we finally found the closeness we’d missed for so long.
After she passed, I found a letter she’d written years earlier, filled with regret. She hadn’t left because she didn’t love me—she left because she didn’t know how to love herself.
Now I bring yellow roses to her grave every spring, remembering not the woman who disappeared, but the one who found her way back.
