My daughterinlaw is pushing to sell my apartment to bankroll her sons house: I will not end my life beneath a bridge.
My heart is torn between anguish and fear. My daughterinlaw wants to strip me of the home I have loved all my life so that my son can realize his dream. Their plans for a spacious family nest feel like a verdict, and I, an aging woman alone, dread ending up roofless. This tale is about filial love, betrayal, and the struggle to keep my own corner of life in a world that increasingly feels 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 themselves with their daughter into a modest tworoom flat. Seven years ago Julien bought a plot and began constructing a house. Nothing happened the first year. In the second year they erected a fence and poured foundations, then the work stopped 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 twostorey residence where I could also be welcomed. My son is a family man, and I have always been proud of his devotion.
They have already sacrificed so much for this build. Amélie persuaded Julien to sell their threeroom flat, move into something smaller, and invest the difference in the house. Now they live in cramped quarters, yet they do not give up. Whenever they visit me, every conversation drifts to their future home: windows, insulation, wiring My health worries and anxieties seem to fall on deaf ears. I stay silent, listen, but a deep dread swells inside me. For some time now I sense Amélie and Julien intend to sell my threeroom flat to finish the work.
One day Julien told me, Mother, well all live together in that big house you, us, and our little one. I dared to ask, So I have to sell my apartment? They nodded, speaking enthusiastically about the joy of sharing a roof. Yet when I saw the cold look in Amélie’s eyes, I realized something: I could never live under her command. She does not hide her dislike, and I am tired of pretending everything is fine. Her icy glances, her sharp words that is not what I want to endure at my age.
I want to help my son. It breaks me to watch him struggle on that site, a project that could still take ten more years. But I asked the question that has been gnawing me: And where will I go? Move into their tiny flat? Into the unfinished house, without comfort? Amélie shot back, Youll be perfectly fine in the countryside! We own a small vacation cottagea old building with no heating, usable only in summer. I enjoy the warm days there, but winter? Heating with wood, bathing in a basin, stepping out into the freeze to use the toilet? My rheumatism and frail health could not survive that.
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 battle for survival. Yet money is short for the construction, and I feel my daughterinlaw nudging me toward the abyss. Recently I overheard her on the phone with her mother: We have to move her into the neighbors house and sell her flat, she whispered. My blood ran cold. The neighbor, Louis Morel, is a solitary old man like me. We sometimes share tea and chat, and I bring him cakes. But to live under his roof? That is her schemeto rid herself of me while taking my home.
I knew Amélie didnt want to live with me, but this level of treachery I do not believe their promise of shared happiness under one roof. Her words are lies meant to force me to sell. I love Julien, and his distress grips my heart, but I cannot sacrifice my own home. It is all I have left. Without it, I would be as good as a discarded piece of furniture. And if their building drags on for years, leaving me homelessor in that icy cottage where winter would be a sentence?
Each night I lie awake, consumed by my thoughts. Helping my son feels like a duty, yet ending up without shelter is a price too steep. Amélie sees me only as an obstacle, and her plot with the neighbor feels like a dagger to the back. I fear losing not just my house but also my son if I refuse. Still, the terror of ending up under a bridge, stripped of my last refuge, is even stronger. I do not know which path will let me stay true to both my child and myself. My soul cries out in pain, and I pray the heavens grant me the strength to choose wisely.
My Daughter-in-Law Presses for the Sale of My Flat to Fund Her Son’s House: I Refuse to End Up Living Under a Bridge.
