My mom didn’t pry. Just nodded like she understood the kind of pain that doesn’t need words.
That year, she brought him gloves along with the dinner. And a pair of thick socks.
The next year? A grocery gift card tucked inside. “It came in the mail,” she said, but I knew she bought it herself.
Once, she even offered him help in finding a room.
Eli flinched like she’d offered to chain him to something. “I can’t,” he politely protested.
“Why not?”
He looked at me, then back down. “Because I’d rather freeze than owe anyone.”
I don’t know if it was pride or fear. But my mom didn’t push.
She just nodded. “Okay. But dinner still stands.”
I moved out after high school. Got a job. Started a life that looked fine from the outside.
Then cancer came for my mother. Subtle at first. Fatigue. Weight loss. A laugh that sounded thinner.
“Probably just my thyroid acting up, dear,” she’d say.
It wasn’t.
She was gone in under a year.
We didn’t get one last Christmas. Just a blurry fall full of doctors, silence, and watching the strongest person I knew disappear in pieces.
By December, I was surviving. Sort of.
Showering, paying the rent, and just functioning.