My mom died of cancer when I was 17.
Three years later, my dad married a woman who was only one year older than me.
I was furious. Disgusted. I convinced myself he’d erased my mother with someone younger, prettier, easier to love. So I cut him out of my life completely—for nearly five years.
Then last week, my stepmom showed up at my door.
She looked exhausted, fragile, nothing like the woman I remembered. “You need to know the truth,” she said. “Your father is very sick.”
And then she told me why he married her.
She had been my mother’s hospice nurse.
Before Mom died, she made my dad promise not to face life alone. She asked this woman—someone she trusted deeply—to stay, to care for him, to protect him from drowning in grief. I learned my mother had helped her through nursing school, treated her like a daughter, loved her.
I had spent years believing my dad betrayed my mom.
When really, he was honoring her final wish.
The next day, I went home. My dad looked smaller, frailer. When he saw me, he whispered, “You came.”
We cried, talked, and grieved together for the time we’d lost.
Before I left, my stepmom gave me a letter from my mom—asking me to be kind, to forgive, to see this woman as family.
My dad passed six months later, holding both our hands.
And I learned the truth too late—but not too late to heal.
