It wasn’t supposed to be permanent. That’s what everyone says, I know, but in my case there was actually a specific event that made it look temporary: my mother fell in the bathroom and fractured her wrist and also, more alarmingly, showed a level of confusion in the days following that scared me enough to stay.
I had an apartment at the time, a one-bedroom I’d lived in for three years. I liked it. I had a kitchen with a window over the counter and a neighbor who played guitar badly but not too loudly and a routine that was mine. I was working full-time as a bookkeeper for a property management firm downtown. I was doing fine.
Daniel lived four states away with his wife Pamela and their two kids. He had a landscaping and hardscaping business that was, depending on the year, either doing pretty well or in need of a bridge loan. He came home for Christmas and sometimes for summer. He called Mom on Sundays, usually. He was not bad at being her son. He just wasn’t close.
When Mom fell, I came and stayed. At first it was just until her wrist healed. Then it was until she stabilized, whatever that meant. Then the doctor used the phrase “some cognitive changes consistent with early-stage vascular issues” and the word “monitoring” came up a lot, and I was the person who was there to do the monitoring.
I sublet my apartment to a woman from work for six months. Then I let it go.