My Daughter-in-Law Pushes Me to Sell My Flat to Fund Her Son’s House: I Refuse to End Up Living Under a Bridge.

My daughterinlaw is pushing to sell my flat so she can fund her sons house: I wont end my days under a bridge.
My heart tears between pain and fear. She wants to strip me of the home I have loved all my life to realize my grandsons dream. Their plans for a grand family nest feel like a sentence, and I, an aging woman alone, dread being left without a roof. This tale is about filial love, betrayal, and the fight to keep ones own corner in a world that feels increasingly foreign.
My name is Élodie Lefebvre, and I live in a small town in southern Provence. Ten years ago my son Julien married Amélie. Since then they have cramped into a modest tworoom apartment with their daughter. Seven years ago Julien bought a plot and began building a house. The first year nothing happened. In the second year they erected a fence and poured the foundations, then the work stalled again for lack of money. Julien saved patiently for materials, never losing hope. Over the years they raised the first floor, but they still dream of a twostory home where I could also be welcomed. My son is a family man, and I have always been proud of his dedication.
They have already sacrificed a great deal for this construction. Amélie convinced Julien to sell their threeroom apartment, move into a smaller one, and invest the difference in the house. Now they live in cramped conditions but refuse to give up. Whenever they visit me, every conversation turns to their future home: windows, insulation, electricity My health worries and anxieties seem not to bother them. I stay silent, listen, while a silent dread grows inside me. For a long time Ive felt that Amélie and Julien plan to sell my threeroom flat to finish the work.
One day Julien said, Mom, well all live together in that big house you, us, and our little one. I dared to ask, So I have to sell my flat? They nodded, speaking enthusiastically about the joy of sharing a roof. But when I saw Amélies cold stare, I understood one thing: I could never live under her authority. She hides no contempt, and I am tired of pretending everything is fine. Her icy looks and sharp words are not what I want to endure at my age.
I want to help my son. It breaks my heart to watch him struggle on a site that could still take ten years. Yet I asked the question that haunts me: Where will I go? Move into their tiny apartment? Live in that unfinished house without comfort? Amélie immediately replied, Youll be perfectly fine in the countryside! We own a small holiday cottagea rundown building without heating, livable only in summer. I enjoy the warm days there, but in winter? Heating with wood, washing in a basin, stepping out into the frost for the toilet? My rheumatism and health would not survive.
People in the country live like that, Amélie declared. Yes, they live, but not under such conditions! I refuse to turn my twilight years into a survival fight. Still, money is missing for the construction, and I feel my daughterinlaw pushing me toward the abyss. Recently I heard her on the phone with her mother: We have to make her move in with the neighbor and sell her flat, she whispered. My blood ran cold. The neighbor, Louis Morel, is a solitary elderly man like me. We sometimes share tea and chat, and I bring him cakes. Yet living under his roof is his planto rid himself of me while taking my home.
I knew Amélie didnt want to live with me, but this level of deceit I dont believe their promise of a shared happy roof. Her words are lies meant to force me to sell. I love Julien, and his distress squeezes my heart, but I cannot sacrifice my own house. It is all I have left. Without it I would be nothing, abandoned like an old, useless piece of furniture. What if their building drags on for years, leaving me on the street? Or in that icy cottage where winter would be a condemnation?
Each night I lie awake, haunted by my thoughts. Helping my son is my duty, yet ending up homeless is an unbearable price. Amélie sees me only as an obstacle, and her scheme with the neighbor feels like a knife in the back. I fear losing not just my home but also my son if I refuse. Yet the terror of ending up beneath a bridge, stripped of my last refuge, is stronger. I do not know which path to choose, one that betrays neither my child nor myself. My soul cries out in pain, and I pray the heavens grant me the strength to make the right choice.