My daughterinlaw keeps pressing for the sale of my flat to fund her sons house: I wont spend my last days under a bridge.
My heart is torn between anguish and fear. My daughterinlaw wants to strip me of the home I have treasured all my life so her son can achieve his dream. Their plans for a grand family nest feel like a sentence, and I, an aging woman alone, dread ending up roofless. This tale is about filial love, betrayal, and the struggle to keep my piece of life in a world that grows ever more alien to me.
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 been cramped together with their daughter in a modest tworoom apartment. Seven years ago Julien bought a plot of land and began building a house. The first year nothing happened. In the second year they erected a fence and poured the foundations, then work stalled again for lack of money. Julien patiently saved for materials, never losing hope. Over the years they raised the first floor, but they still dream of a twostorey home 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 a great deal for this construction. Amélie persuaded Julien to sell their threeroom flat, move into a smaller place and invest the difference in the house. Now they live in tight quarters, but they refuse to give up. Whenever they visit me, every conversation revolves around their future home: windows, insulation, wiring My health worries and anxieties seem to mean nothing to them. I stay silent, listen, while a dull dread expands inside me. For a long time I have sensed that Amélie and Julien intend to sell my threeroom flat to finish the work.
One day Julien told me, 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 apartment? They nodded, speaking enthusiastically about the joy of sharing one roof. Yet looking at Amélie’s cold stare I realized something: I could never live under her authority. She does not hide her dislike, and I am tired of pretending everything is fine. Her icy glances, her sharp wordsthis is not what I want at my age.
I want to help my son. It breaks me to see him struggle on a site that could still take ten years. But I finally asked the question that haunts me: And where will I go? Move into their tiny flat? Live in the unfinished house, without comfort? Amélie retorted immediately, Youll be perfectly fine in the country! We own a small holiday cottagea dilapidated house without heating, usable only in summer. I enjoy the warm days there, but winter? Heating with wood, bathing in a basin, stepping out into the frost to use the toilet? My rheumatism and frail health would not survive.
The country life works for people, Amélie declared. Yes, they survive, but not under such conditions! I refuse to turn my twilight years into a battle for survival. Yet money is missing for the build, and I feel my daughterinlaw pushing me toward the abyss. Recently I overheard her on the phone with her mother: We have to move her into the neighbours house and sell her flat, she whispered. My blood ran cold. The neighbour, Louis Morel, is a solitary old man like me. We sometimes share tea and chat, and I bring him cakes. But living under his roof? That is the planto rid themselves of me while taking my home.
I knew Amélie did not want to live with me, but this level of deceit I cannot 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 tightens my heart, but I cannot sacrifice my own house. It is all that remains. Without it I would be left with nothing, abandoned like an old, useless piece of furniture. And if their construction drags on for years, leaving me on the street? Or in that freezing cottage where winter would be a condemnation?
Each night I lie awake, consumed by my thoughts. Helping my son feels like my duty, yet ending up homeless is a price too steep. Amélie sees me only as an obstacle, and her scheme with the neighbour feels like a dagger. I fear losing not just my home but also my son if I refuse. Still, the terror of ending up under a bridge, stripped of my last refuge, is stronger. I do not know which path to take that will betray neither my child nor myself. My soul cries out in pain, and I pray the heavens grant me the strength to choose wisely.
The Daughter-in-Law Pushes for the Sale of My Flat to Fund Her Son’s House: I Refuse to Live Out My Days Beneath a Bridge.
