One day, a young man decided to move his mother into a retirement home, where he only came to see her occasionally.

A painful truth

Her son, at first surprised, asked why she was so keen on this. She replied with moving gentleness:
“My son, I have endured the heat, the lack of comfort, and sometimes even hunger. But it is not for myself that I worry. It is for you. When your children move you in here, I want you to have what I did not have.”

These words struck him like a bolt of lightning. She wasn’t speaking for herself, but for him, for the future. He understood then that what he had believed to be a reasonable choice was, for his mother, a silent wound. And that one day he,  too, risked suffering the bitter consequences .