…be admitted to hospice care in January with terminal cancer.”
I don’t have cancer. I’d had a full physical in October. My doctor said I had the blood pressure of a fifty-year-old.
My attorney, Ms. Reyes, showed me the attached letter. It was on the letterhead of a hospice company, signed by a nurse named Linda Shaw.
Linda Shaw was my daughter-in-law’s mother.
She’d worked at that hospice for twenty years. She’d used the company’s letterhead to write a statement saying I was terminally ill, would be unable to attend the closing in January, and had authorized my son to sign on my behalf.
Ms. Reyes called the hospice’s director. The director was horrified. Linda was suspended that afternoon, and the company reported her to the state nursing board.
The property transfer was blocked. The police opened an investigation.
I decided to go to Christmas dinner anyway. I wore my brightest red sweater. When I walked in, carrying a pecan pie, my daughter-in-law dropped a serving spoon.
“Merry Christmas,” I said. “I hope you don’t mind. I’m planning to have quite a few more.”
My son walked me back out to my car after dinner. He said he hadn’t known about the hospice letter, only that his wife and mother-in-law were “handling the paperwork.” I told him a man should know what he signs his mother’s name to. He cried. I believed him. Next year, I’m hosting Christmas. The group chat is called “Grandma’s Next Twenty Christmases.”
