I raised my son by myself. My husband left when the child wasn’t even a year old.
He has since worked at two sites at once. Our little family was just held on my shoulders.
Most of the time my mom Carmen helped me. Sometimes I had to call in a babysitter, but that was expensive.
I was grateful to my mother for her support, even though I sometimes noticed oddities in her. I could forget something important, say things out of place, like I was in the clouds. But I attributed it to fatigue or age.
And then one day my son Matthew said to me:
– Mom, and can’t you stop working?
— No honey — I smiled and stroked his head. — We need money: for the house, food, your toys. Why do you ask?
— I don’t know… — shrugged —, just curious.
At that time I didn’t care about it. I thought it was simply a childish occurrence. But within a few days, something happened that changed everything.
Afternoon back after my shift. Matthew ran to me, hugged me tight, and suddenly burst into tears.
– Mom, please don’t leave me with grandma anymore.
I was left stoned.
— Why my darling? Do you miss me? Or did grandma punish you?
— She… she acting funny. I’m scared.
— What has he done?
Matthew looked away, with a trembling voice:
— It hurt me… Please don’t come back anymore.
Goosebumps crawled through my insides. But my son couldn’t explain himself well: he was trembling and silent, as if he was even afraid to speak.
I called my mom. Carmen insisted that everything was fine, that they had played, that Matthew had just imagined things.
But I saw it clearly: my son wasn’t lying. His eyes were filled with true terror.
I asked for permission at work the next day. I told my mom I was leaving, but I actually hid in the closet, barely breathing, my sweaty palms pressed against the wooden door. I could hear my heartbeat louder than any other noise in the house.
Carmen, my mother, approached my son Mateo’s bed. At first, her gestures seemed tender, almost normal: she stroked his hair, pulled the blanket up to his shoulders, and placed the teddy bear beside him. I began to wonder if perhaps my son had overreacted, if it was all just a child’s fantasy.
But suddenly, her tone changed. In a low voice, almost a whisper, she said:
“You have to be obedient, or something bad will happen to your mother.”
I felt the blood rush to my head. The boy shrank under the blanket and began to tremble.
“No… I don’t want anything to happen to Mom,” he stammered.
Carmen smiled strangely and took a metal spoon out of her pocket. He began rubbing it against the edge of the bed, making a high-pitched, chilling sound.
“See? This is how it’ll hurt if you don’t do what I say.”
At that moment, I realized I couldn’t hide any longer. I jumped out of the closet and shouted, “Mom! What are you doing?”
She turned sharply, surprised. Her eyes were empty, lost, and for a moment I had the impression she didn’t recognize me. Then she began to laugh, but it wasn’t her normal laugh: it was a broken, strange laugh, like that of someone who has lost their mind.
“I’m just training him,” she said, raising the spoon as if it were a knife. “You’re weak; you don’t know how to raise a man.”
I ran to my son and pulled him out of bed, clutching him to my chest. He was crying inconsolably, his face buried in my shirt.
“Mom, stop,” I said, my voice shaking but firm. — You need help.
In that instant, I understood: her strange behavior of the last few months wasn’t just fatigue or age. It was something much more serious. A disorder, an illness that made her dangerous even to those she was supposed to protect.
That same night, I called an ambulance. The doctors confirmed that Carmen had the onset of severe dementia, accompanied by aggressive episodes. They told me she would need constant monitoring at a specialized clinic in Madrid.
It was extremely hard to accept the truth. She was my mother, the woman who had raised me, who had given me everything she had. But at the same time, I had to choose between her and Mateo’s safety.
As I closed the ambulance door behind her, I felt a hot tear slide down my cheek. My son squeezed my hand and whispered,
— Thank you, Mom.
Then I realized that, no matter how painful life’s decisions are, my duty was to protect him, the only person who depends completely on me.
And I swore I would never again leave him alone with someone he couldn’t fully trust.
