Chapter 7: Depositions and Soft Food
The legal calendar filled with appointments that did not care about anyone’s feelings.
I sat for a deposition in a conference room with a view of a parking deck and answered questions about dates, bruises, bottles, and the moment the floor creaked under my shoe. Gwendolyn’s counsel tried to paint me as an absent son inventing drama. I stayed inside the medical record and the video. Drama does not leave fingerprint patterns. Drama does not stockpile unopened prescriptions under a bed.
Florence’s capacity evaluation, handled gently by a geriatric specialist, confirmed what we lived daily: she could understand and express, with effort; she had been under coercive pressure; any documents signed in the post-stroke window would require hard scrutiny. When the specialist asked Florence whether she wanted Gwendolyn involved in her care, Florence said no without looking away. The word was small and enormous.
Helen learned to puree meals in ways that still tasted like food. I learned to feed without rushing. Florence apologized for the pace until we made a rule: no apologies for surviving. She almost smiled at the rule. Almost was a kind of currency we accepted.
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Gwendolyn attempted contact through a church acquaintance, a message about forgiveness and Christian duty. Helen blocked the number and told the acquaintance not to carry water for a woman who had poured cold water on an old woman in a bed. The acquaintance left uncomfortable and did not return. Circles can shrink on purpose.
At the insurance office my manager asked, carefully, whether I needed reduced hours formalized. I said yes. The system failure that had sent me home early had become, in my mind, the only luck I was willing to call by that name. I did not waste it by pretending I could carry full billable days and a mother reclaiming her life and a multi-million-dollar title war in the same unbroken stretch of nerve.
