Between Two Mothers: The Cost of Compassion

“I thought I raised a daughter to care for her own mother, not someone else’s.”

The words felt like a slap across my face. My mom’s voice, usually so soft, cracked like thunder in our tiny kitchen. I gripped the phone tighter, my free hand trembling against the Formica counter. I could hear her breathing—heavy, angry, hurt. I stared out the window at the gray drizzle falling over our Ohio backyard, trying to steady myself before I answered.

“Mom, it’s not like I’m choosing her over you,” I whispered, but she cut me off.

“I needed you last week and you never even called back. But you have time for Carol. For his mother.”

I closed my eyes, the ache in my chest growing. Carol, my mother-in-law, was dying. Pancreatic cancer, the doctors said, and the end was coming fast. She was in a hospital bed in our living room, drifting in and out of morphine dreams. My husband, Tom, was barely holding it together at work, and our two kids watched cartoons at a low volume in the next room, pretending not to notice the way our house had changed.

But my own mother—Evelyn—was alone, too. She always had been, ever since that night when I was seven and my dad stormed out, his voice echoing down the hall: “It’s all mine, and I’m taking it!” The memory flashed through my mind, his arms full of our TV, his feet thumping down the porch steps. He left with almost everything, even the couch, as if the house itself owed him a debt. Mom and I slept on blankets that first week, the silence a living thing between us.

I grew up watching her work two jobs: cashier at the grocery store by day, cleaning offices at night. She packed my lunches with crumpled love notes, her handwriting shaky from fatigue. She never remarried. She never even dated. She told me once, when I was twelve, “I just want you to have a better life than this, Kayla. Promise me.”

I promised. But I never asked what that meant for her, if I’d be leaving her behind.

Now, at thirty-eight, I was trying to hold everyone together. My mother-in-law needed help to use the bathroom. My husband needed reassurance that he wasn’t losing his mother alone. My kids needed rides to soccer practice and someone to sign permission slips. And my mom—my only family—needed me to remember where I came from.

“I’m sorry, Mom,” I said. “I’ll come by this weekend. I’ll bring the kids.”

She was silent for a long time. Then: “Don’t bother. I wouldn’t want to take you away from your real family.”

The line went dead. I stood there, phone pressed to my ear, until Tom came in and touched my shoulder.

“She’ll come around,” he said softly. “It’s just—she’s lonely.”

“So is Carol,” I snapped, and then bit my lip. Guilt twisted inside me. Tom flinched, but didn’t argue. He just squeezed my hand, his eyes rimmed red from another night sleeping in a chair by his mother’s side.

That night, after the kids were asleep, I sat with Carol. Her skin was pale, her hair a silver halo on the pillow. When I brushed her forehead, she opened her eyes and managed a smile.

“You’re a good girl, Kayla,” she whispered, her voice papery thin. “Your mom must be proud.”

I choked on the words. Proud? Or furious?

“I try,” I said, smoothing her blanket. “Sometimes I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.”

She squeezed my hand. “You do what you can. That’s all any of us can do.”

The next day, I called my mom again. She ignored me. I called her every day that week. I left voicemails: “Mom, I miss you. The kids miss you. Please, let’s talk.” Nothing.

The following Sunday, I baked her favorite lemon bars and drove the twenty minutes to her house. The porch was cluttered with unopened mail. I knocked, heart pounding. When she answered, she looked smaller than I remembered—her hair grayer, her shoulders hunched. She stared at me like I was a stranger.

“You look tired,” she said, her voice flat.

“So do you,” I answered. I held out the lemon bars. “I brought these.”

She took them, but didn’t invite me in.

“Why can’t you put your own family first?” she asked, eyes shining with unshed tears. “After all I gave up for you.”

I wanted to scream that I was trying. That no one taught me how to split myself in two, how to be a daughter to two mothers, both demanding, both deserving. Instead, I said, “You are my family. Carol is, too. I can’t choose.”

“But you already have,” she said, and shut the door.

Driving home, I sobbed so hard I had to pull over. The sky was bruised purple, rain streaking the windshield like the tears on my face. I thought of my father, somewhere out there, never once calling to see if we were okay. I thought of the emptiness he left behind, the way my mother filled it with her love—and her hurt.

Tom tried to comfort me, but nothing helped. For weeks, I stumbled through the days: work, caregiving, mothering, pleading with my own mom for forgiveness. When Carol died, I stood at her funeral and watched my husband crumble. I held his hand and smiled for the kids, but inside I was hollowed out.

After the service, my mom came. She stood at the back, arms crossed, watching me comfort Tom and the children. She left before I could speak to her.

It wasn’t until months later, after the casseroles were gone and the house was quiet again, that my mom let me in. She called one morning, her voice softer than I’d ever heard it.

“I know you did what you had to,” she said. “I just… I don’t want to lose you, too.”

I cried, right there in the grocery store, wedged between the apples and bananas. We met for coffee that weekend. It wasn’t a perfect reunion. There was still old hurt, still anger, still the shadow of my father’s absence haunting us both. But for the first time, I felt the hope that maybe, just maybe, we could find our way back to each other.

I wonder—can you ever really be enough for everyone you love? Or does loving one person always come at the cost of another?