This is my mother, Cynthia. She was loving, full of life, a hard worker, a good friend, a great mom. She was also a domestic abuse survivor for 32 years. As was I. My way out was school, far away. For her to escape, she had to leave her own home, taking only what she could carry while her husband was at work, leave her job and take what cash she had on hand. She moved two hours north and had to start her life over from scratch. It was hard but she did it. I helped, but she was determined I stay in school, keep working and achieve my career goals. The commissioner overseeing her divorce decreed her ex pay her a reasonable amount in spousal support as he makes over $100,000 a year. Instead, her ex delayed court proceedings filing one delay after the other and instead paid her $475 a month. Before my mother could get the delays stopped, she began to get sick.

It was not until the end of 2018 that I was forced to relocate, leave my job and everything else and come to take care of her until we could get a diagnosis. That did not happen until August of 2022. Diagnosis: Parkinson’s. By then advanced stage 3.

Her ex was notified. But he did not care. She was not allowed to return to their house to be in comfort in her painful illness. Her ex took out a loan against it, defaulted and took the equity remaining of $200,000, put it with his annual income and bought himself a nice townhouse in a gated community.

I struggled to take care of her, working 17 hours a day, being paid state minimum wage for only 283 hours a month instead of the actual 476 hours and with no help from anyone, making sure she was as comfortable as possible, stretching my tiny income and her small social security disability as she had been unable to work for years before that. Needless to say, I tried to stretch the $475 a month too. Sometimes bills weren’t paid. Sometimes we lost things for awhile. Sometimes I was hungry so she could eat her fill, or very uncomfortable so she could have the best comfort.

She lasted far longer than any of her doctors and surgeons expected for how advanced the disease was already and was communicative to the end. She died at home in my arms peacefully on 5th February. But it was not an easy end. Not only had she not been able to eat and barely able to drink or speak, only sign, but her one desire, her sole focus was for me to get to go back to all that I had left to come and take care of her when neither of us had known what was going to happen or how badly it would end. She did not get that wish.

Before she was forced to leave her own home, she had four life insurances policies worth $50,000 to $100,000 each. Losing everything and starting over she could no longer keep them paid and they were discontinued. She managed to obtain a small one after. This one covered some of the funeral home charges and some of the cemetery charges but not the rest. I had used my entire savings to help take care of us and stretch every dollar. Her ex is aware of her suffering and death. Still does not care.

Now here I am doing what I never thought in a million years I would ever be doing. As I have nowhere else to turn, I am turning to those who can spare something, anything for me to finish paying for her burial and do what she had wanted me to more than anything, which is get back on my feet and back to my own life, not be stuck in limbo. Yes, I have dozens of applications out in my career fields and even other sectors that I would be willing to work in at lower salary. What I find is working against me is that the several years out of the mainstream job market taking care of her is seen not as something noble, but as a detriment, and in some people’s opinion, a foolish move. To complicate things, I have my own medical issues I am dealing with that kept being put off taking care of her and are now serious.

So. If you can, give what you want. If you can’t, then God bless you for reading and I simply ask a prayer from you for me to survive all that I am enduring alone. Thank you.