**Diary Entry A Difficult Choice**
*She cant stay here. Shes nobody to us.* I overheard my late husbands daughter, Charlotte, arguing with her brother, insisting I should be evicted from the house Ive called home for the past fifteen years.
*»Wait, Charlotte. Its not that simple. Wheres Aunt Margaret supposed to go now?»* said Daniel, my husbands son. I always thought him kinder and more reasonable than his sister. In fifteen years of marriage, I had learned to see people for who they truly were.
My husband, Edward, passed away recently, and his children from his first marriage arrived swiftly to divide his estatea considerable one: the house, the garden, the garage, the car. I never laid claim to much, but I hadnt expected to be pushed out so quickly.
Edward and I met later in life, both carrying the weight of failed marriages and grown children. I had two daughters; he had a son and a daughter. Id just turned fifty, with my eldest recently married, bringing her husband into our cramped little flat. My younger daughter was still unmarried, and I couldnt see how wed manage.
Then Edward came alongfive years my senior, living alone, his children long settled. Hed held senior positions, earned well, and provided for them. He didnt hesitateasked me to move in with him almost at once. I thought it over and decided, *why not?* He was a good man, treated me well, and so I left the city for his countryside cottage.
We lived simply but well. He kept a vegetable patch, chickens, rabbitseven a cow and a pig at one point. Our children visited often, and we welcomed them gladly, never sending them away empty-handed. Edward and I never married officially. Wed talked about it at first, but in the end, we decided a stamp in a passport mattered little at our age.
Those were fifteen wonderful years. No regrets.
In that time, my younger daughter married too, though not without drama. The girls nearly came to blows over the flatmy eldest, settled there, refused to share or let her sister move in with her husband. In the end, they paid her off, and that was that.
But a year ago, my youngest divorced and returned home with her child. My eldest wasnt pleased, and the arguments started again. Id hoped shed reconcile with her husband, but no luck yet.
Now, with Edward gone, Ive nowhere to go. And even if I return to the flatstill legally mineI know Ill be in the way.
*»Aunt Margaret, you can stay until we find a buyer,»* Daniel offered the next morning. I was relieveduntil Charlotte added her conditions: I could remain if I kept up the house and garden alone.
So now Im to be their unpaid labourer, all for the privilege of not paying rent? At sixty-five, tending to livestock and a garden is no small task.
Im stuck. Stay and work like a servant for children wholl toss me out the moment the house sells? Or go back to my own daughters, where Ill only be another burden?
Perhaps the answer is clearer from the outside. But for now, all I know is this: kindness, when given with strings attached, is no kindness at all.
