Mom and Dad changed more slowly. Without my monthly $600 supplement, their mortgage-free life remained secure but less comfortable. They watched Felicia’s collapse and finally had to live with the fact that the daughter they had written off as a future burden was recovering without asking them for anything. Nine months after our confrontation, Dad mailed me a five-page handwritten letter. He admitted that fear of aging had turned into selfishness and that they had treated my medical crisis as a threat to their assets instead of a daughter’s emergency.
A few weeks later, they came to my new home and asked to talk on the porch. Dad’s shoulders seemed smaller than I remembered. “We abandoned you when you needed us,” he said. “Then when money came, we came back wanting more.” Mom cried and said she was ashamed that she had measured my worth by what I could provide.
