I remember Michael calling me that first Friday afternoon.

“Mom, it went through. Thank you. I don’t know what we’d do without you.”

His gratitude was genuine. I could hear the relief, the weight lifting off his shoulders.

“You’d do the same for me,” I told him.

And I believed that. I really did.

For the first few months, I’d get a text every week. A heart emoji. A quick, “Thanks, Mom.” Sometimes Clare would send a photo of the kids with a caption like, “Because of Grandma, we’re okay this week.”

It made me feel needed. Connected. Like I wasn’t just an old woman living alone with her memories and her pills in her too-quiet house.

But then something shifted.

The thank-you texts became shorter, then less frequent. Then they stopped altogether. Instead, I’d get a message on Thursday nights.