You’re trying to protect your mother’s privacy — but I know what’s really going on
I realize that the last thing you guys need right now when you’re dealing with the aftermath of your wife’s/mother’s/sister’s/daughter’s breakdown is to deal with a disgruntled friend. So, if you don’t want to read my letter, I get it. By all means, tuck it away for another day when this is all history.
But when that day does arrive, and this is all mercifully behind us, I’d like to tell you the story of a friend, a friend who cared as much about your family member as you did—or at least almost as much — a friend whom your relative confided in regularly.
I was the one Mindy called at 1 a.m. crying because her mother had broken her hip for the third time and her father wanted to place her mother in a facility but she was refusing to go. I was the one she called when her husband yet again complained about her bookkeeping inabilities, when her 19-year-old looked her in the eye and told her she was the worst mother on the planet.
“I don’t know what to do,” she’d repeat over and over. “Everything I do is wrong. I feel like a failure. I’m getting depressed. I’ve tried davening. I’ve tried therapy. Nobody can help me.”
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