It had been six months since my mother vanished. She would be here one day, packing my lunch and reminding me to lock the front door, and then she would simply disappear. Not a word. No justification. Not a trace of strife. I knew my mother, but the police claimed there was no proof of criminal play. She refused to simply go.
I looked everywhere. contacted shelters, hospitals, and long-lost friends. Nothing. Being ignorant was the worst part. Was she somewhere out there? Was she injured? Did she decide to vanish?
Then I came across it last night while doom-scrolling on Facebook. A recently uploaded photo that was included in the album of an unknown woman.
Mom. holding a cake for a birthday. Grinning.
“Happy birthday to the sweetest soul!” was the caption. I’m very grateful to be celebrating with you ❤️.
Heart racing, I gazed at the screen. It was posted by a woman I didn’t recognize. The location tag was located hundreds of miles away in another state. What about my mother? She appeared to be content. wholesome. As if she hadn’t disappeared six months ago, prompting me to speculate that she might have been buried in a ditch.
I scrolled through the woman’s posts after clicking on her profile. I had trembling hands. Some of the additional photos were weeks old. My mother was among them as well.
Thus, she had been alive the entire time.
living a very different life.
Not with me.
I took a deep breath and performed the only thing that came to mind.
A message was sent to the woman.
She got offline as soon as she finished reading it.
My heart pounded in my chest as my fingers lingered over my phone. I reloaded the page. Nothing. There was silence—no response, no fresh posts. My stomach turned over.
Why would she vanish in that manner? Wouldn’t she simply answer and make things clear if this was just a random misunderstanding?
My mind was so full of possibilities that I didn’t get any sleep that night. Was she having problems? Brainwashed? Having two lives? Had she forgotten? Or—worse—had she just decided to abandon me?
I had a new idea by dawn. If this woman didn’t respond, I would ask her directly. To get to the city where the photo was taken, I purchased a bus ticket. I had plenty of time to mentally run through every option because the travel lasted eight hours.
I arrived in the late afternoon, fired on adrenaline yet fatigued. I was directed to a little café on a quiet street corner by the address on the woman’s profile. I pulled the door open and looked at the tables. Then—
She was there.
Mom.
She sipped a cup of tea and sat at a table by the window, chuckling quietly. She appeared so… calm. As if she had never given me the same amount of worry that I had about her.
I paused for a moment. What if she didn’t know who I was? What if, after all this effort, I discovered she had really forgotten me?
I couldn’t go back now, though. I approached her table after taking a deep breath.
“Mom?”
She stopped. The cup shook a little in her hands. She looked up slowly, and for a split second, her face was one of sheer disbelief. Then—perplexity.
“Who are you?” She muttered.
My breath caught. It’s me, Mom. It’s—your daughter is it.
She shook her head as tears welled up in her eyes. “I—I don’t get it. I presently reside here. This is where I call home.
The woman from the Facebook post took over at that point. “I believe we ought to speak.”
I found out the truth during the course of the next hour. Alzheimer’s disease struck my mother early. Before she departed, she had begun to exhibit symptoms, such as getting lost on her way home from work, forgetting appointments, and misplacing items in odd locations. And then, one day, a memory from decades earlier came back to her. She thought she was still living in the hometown of her grandparents and had just moved on, on a route that was clear in her imagination but no longer existed in reality.
The good folks in town had taken her in when she got there. No one thought to call the police because she appeared to be doing fine. To them, she was simply a woman who had returned home, and she talked about her past as though it were the present.
I held her hands in mine while tears ran down my cheeks. You don’t have to do this by yourself, Mom. I’m present. I’ll look after you.
After a moment of hesitation, she squeezed my fingers. “I don’t recall everything… But you recognize yourself. similar to home.
For me, that was sufficient.
It would be difficult. Some days would be difficult. However, love is about showing up, even when things become messy, and it has nothing to do with perfection.
“Mom, come home with me. Together, we’ll figure it out.
I felt optimism for the first time in six months as she gently nodded.
If you were moved by this tale, please share and like it. Who could need to hear this today? You never know.
