Karen finally told me why she had never corrected Mom. In 2019, Mom had asked her who I was after I missed a few visits, and Karen had simply said, “She’s the daughter who doesn’t come around.” She said she thought it would make things easier because Mom was already confused and I was rarely there. I wanted to be angry, but Karen was crying before she finished explaining. Then she told me there was another reason she’d kept doing it.
She said Mom had started asking about me whenever I visited, even when she couldn’t remember my name. She’d ask where I lived, whether I was happy, and why I didn’t come more often, and Karen had been answering every question with the same story. Then, six months before Mom died, she found a folder in Mom’s bedroom with my name written on it. Inside was a letter Mom had written years earlier, when she was completely lucid. Karen said she read it and realized Mom had been preparing for the possibility that one of her daughters would eventually turn against the other.
I asked what the letter said, and Karen handed it to me at the funeral. The first line was, “If you are reading this because I no longer know who you are, please don’t let either of you decide what I meant.” Then Mom explained why she’d kept certain things separate between us, and why she had never told me the truth about what happened in 2019. I read the last paragraph twice before I understood why Karen had stayed silent for four years. Mom hadn’t forgotten me at all when she said I wasn’t her daughter — she had been testing whether Karen would protect the lie she’d created.
