They Came for the House, but My Mother Left the Real Inheritance

I stayed in our little hometown in Ohio and watched my world disappear one piece at a time.

First Dad’s memory went.

Then Mom got sick.

The last twelve years of my life weren’t spent climbing a career ladder. They were spent crushing pills, cleaning sheets, lifting dead weight, rubbing lotion into paper-thin skin, and waking up at three in the morning because Dad was screaming for his mother even though he was eighty-two.

My twenties vanished under fluorescent kitchen lights.