I stood in my son’s kitchen at seven in the morning, my arthritic fingers wrapped around an empty prescription bottle, and asked for ten dollars. Just ten dollars to refill the heart medication that kept my sixty-seven-year-old heart beating regularly for another month. It was the simplest request imaginable, the kind of thing a loving family would handle without a second thought.
What I got instead was a master class in cruelty.
“Are you kidding me right now?” Kalia’s voice cut through the morning quiet like a blade. She appeared in the kitchen doorway, blonde hair perfectly styled despite the early hour, wearing a silk robe that probably cost more than my entire monthly pension. “Anita, we’ve talked about this. You can’t keep asking us for money every time you need something.”
My heart—the one that needed those ten-dollar pills—clenched painfully. “It’s just ten dollars, Kalia. For my medication.”
She laughed, but there was no humor in it. “Yesterday it was money for groceries. Last week it was the doctor’s appointment. Where does it end?”
I looked at my son Damon, hoping he would defend me, remind his wife that I wasn’t asking for luxury items. I was asking for medication to stay alive. But Damon just stood there in his pressed shirt and tie, scrolling through his phone, letting his wife handle what he clearly saw as an inconvenience.
“Maybe it’s time you found a job,” Kalia continued, her voice sharpening. “You’re sixty-seven, not ninety-seven. Plenty of people your age work. Walmart is always hiring greeters.”
The suggestion hit like a physical slap. After raising Damon alone from the time his father died when he was five. After working double shifts as a seamstress to put food on the table and keep him in decent clothes. After sacrificing every dream I’d ever had to make sure he had opportunities I never did. She was suggesting I should be a Walmart greeter to afford my heart medication.
My seven and nine-year-old grandchildren, Tyler and Emma, crept into the kitchen in their pajamas, drawn by the raised voices. Emma’s eyes were wide with confusion.
“What’s wrong, Grandma?” Emma whispered.
Before I could answer, Kalia scooped her up. “Nothing’s wrong, sweetheart. Grandma just needs to learn to be more independent. Maybe she’ll find a job so she can buy her own things instead of always asking Mommy and Daddy for money.”
The story doesn’t end here –
it continues on the next page.
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