Todd didn’t even speak. He just shook his head. I felt a cold, hard knot form in my stomach. I realized then, with absolute clarity, that they were waiting for her to die so they could sell her house and split the money, while I spent my own retirement keeping her alive.
That night, I went to see my mother at the hospital. She was lying in the high bed, looking small and fragile under the white cotton blankets. She was terrified of being sent to a cheap county nursing home. “Ellen, don’t let them put me in one of those places,” she wept, gripping my hand. “Please. I’ll do anything. I’ll pay you back. I’ll give you the house. Just don’t let them take me away from my home.”
I went back to my office at the dental clinic the next morning. I talked to the clinic’s legal adviser, a retired attorney named Arthur who helped patients with their estates. He drafted a simple promissory note. It stated that I was loaning my mother the money for her medical care and living expenses, up to $200,000. The loan was secured by a first lien on her house. If she passed away, or if she tried to sell or transfer the house, the debt had to be paid to me immediately, or the title would transfer to my name.
I took that paper back to the hospital. My mother signed it with her own blue kitchen pen, the one with the local hardware store logo printed on the side. The clinic’s notary public stamped it. I put that document in a blue vinyl folder with a cracked plastic corner. It went into my bedroom drawer, under my old winter sweaters, and I didn’t think about it for years. I just kept paying the bills. Last year, my mother had a stroke. The medical bills, the co-pays, and the specialized home care cost another $45,000. Again, I paid it. I cleaned out the last of my dental clinic retirement fund to do it. But she recovered. She was walking again, sitting in her kitchen, drinking her peppermint tea. And that brings us to yesterday morning. My mother had called her estate lawyer, Mr. Vance, to her house to update her will. She had called my brothers too. They all showed up, sitting around her kitchen table like vultures waiting for a meal. I sat in the corner, holding my purse in my lap. I watched my brothers talk to the lawyer, their eyes shining with greed. “We just want to make sure everything is handled properly for Mom,” Mark said, using that serious, fake voice he used when he wanted to sound important.
