Every Time My Father Hugged Me, My Mother Got Angry and Said, “Don’t Let Him Touch You So Much”… I Never Understood Why Until One Night I Saw What He Was Doing When He Thought We Were All Asleep… I Froze

“Why didn’t either of you tell me?”

My father lowered his head.

“Your mother asked me not to.”

“But she was saying things about you…”

He looked at me.

His eyes were red.

“I know.”

“She told me to stay away from you.”

“I know.”

“And you just let me think…”

I couldn’t even finish the sentence.

My father spoke very quietly.

“It was easier for me to let you be angry with me for a few months than to let you look at your mother as if she were broken.”

Then he opened one of the small boxes on the desk.

Inside were memory cards.

Each one had a date written on it.

“The doctor asked me to record the changes in her behavior so they could understand whether the treatment was helping.”

I looked at him.

“And the medicine?”

“Her medication. I organize it every night because sometimes she forgets whether she has taken it.”

I sat down in the chair across from him.

The terrible story I had built inside my head over the past several weeks collapsed in a matter of minutes.

But there was still one question.

“Why does she get especially angry when you hug me?”

My father was silent for a long moment.

“Sometimes she confuses you with her younger sister.”

I knew that story.

My mother’s younger sister had died twenty years earlier.

He continued.

“And when she sees me hugging you, for a few seconds she thinks I’m hugging another woman. Then her mind tries to make sense of it… and everything becomes confused.”

I couldn’t speak anymore.

Then we heard movement near the door.

My mother was standing there.

She had heard everything.

For a long moment, she looked at me.

Then at my father.

“Have I been saying those things again?”

My father walked toward her.

“It’s okay.”

My mother began to cry.

“I know that sometimes things feel completely real in my head. Then later I realize they weren’t.”

I walked over and took her hand.

For the first time in months, none of us tried to pretend that everything in our house was normal.

The following week, I went with them to see her doctor.

A new stage of treatment began.

It wasn’t easy.