After My Death, Mom Destroyed the Family

On the previous Sunday morning, I had gone to Lizbeth's shop to pick a bouquet of flowers for my mother. I even dragged her to accompany me to pick out the best knee massager for my mother. Since the company had scheduled me to attend a training session on Mother's Day, I had to make sure to prepare everything in advance. I left the gift to Lizbeth and asked her to deliver it for me.

Lizbeth was not too keen on my idea. She thought I was completely foolish for even bothering to make my mother happy.         

As Aunt Wanda's daughter and my only true friend, Lizbeth was the one person with whom I could share everything. She knew all too well about my situation at home, how I had always been treated like an outsider. She had often told me that my family didn’t deserve my loyalty or affection. She did not understand why I still cared for them.           

“They don’t care about you. Why do you keep putting yourself through this?” she’d ask me over and over.    

However, I was stubborn. I refused to believe that all hope was lost. I had always clung to the belief that if I just loved them a little more, gave them a little more of myself, one day they would see me. They would appreciate me in the end, right?         

Even when faced with their indifference, I couldn’t give up until the day I died.                  

And, at this very moment, Lizbeth stood at the door. Her eyes were swollen and red. It was obvious that she had cried a lot ever since she learned about my demise.      

When my mother opened the door, Lizbeth could see the mix of surprise and impatience on my mother's face, which she quickly erased. And that sight almost set Lizbeth off.          

After she was able to control her emotions, Lizbeth said coldly, "Auntie, I'm here to do one last thing that Andrea had asked me to do. These are the flowers she picked for you last Saturday, along with the knee massager she bought for you."          

"Originally, she had work training today and couldn’t be here to celebrate Mother's Day with you, so she asked me to deliver these gifts on her behalf," Lizbeth continued, her voice trembling slightly with anguish.

My mother barely acknowledged her explanation. She did not see the gift properly and even responded with a dismissive sentence, "Oh, thanks. The house is a mess. I won't invite you in, Eh, just leave the flowers on the rack by the door."      

Without any care, my mother started to close the door.        

Lizbeth who was starting to get angrier by my mother's reaction, quickly blocked the door with her foot. Her voice rose, trembling with fury, "Auntie! Andrea is dead! Don't you have any feelings at all? Aren’t you sad at all? Do you even realize how much she loved you? Every word you said, she would take it to heart."     

"Just recently, you casually mentioned that your knees hurt. She remembered that. And on her only day off, instead of resting, she dragged me along to find this knee massager for you. It cost her an entire month’s salary, but she didn’t even flinch! Do you know how frugal she was? She barely spent money on herself, not even for new clothes. How can you, as her mother, be so heartless, so blind to what she did for you?"       

Tears welled up in Lizbeth's eyes as she spoke. Her voice broke with emotion. She poured out everything that she had bottled up in her heart for so long.     

For a brief moment, my mother’s face softened, as if something inside her began to stir. However then, just as quickly as possible, her face hardened again, as if she pushed away any trace of guilt.                

"She was my daughter. Of course, she should do things for me. That’s a normal thing for children to do for their mother, isn’t it?" my mother said coldly.    

"Do you really still consider her your daughter?" Lizbeth spat with an incredulous look on her face. "Then why won’t you even look at the gifts she carefully prepared for you? If it was Isabella who gave you these, would you be acting so disdainful like this?" 

"Enough!" my mother snapped. "Don’t you dare compare her to my Isabella? I won’t waste any more time talking to you. Leave!"        

After she said that, my mother tried to forcefully slam the door shut in Lizbeth's face.