by Leslie Hanson
“Your mom isn’t answering the phone. I’m worried about her. Can you check on her?” Immediately following this text, my cell phone rang with a familiar phone number. It was my mother’s cousin, Laurie. I knew why she was calling. Cousin Laurie spoke with my mother daily and routinely called me when she could not be reached.
Over the years, I came to address these calls with diminished urgency as experience taught me my mother was either ignoring the calls or incapacitated by her addiction to opioids. Cousin Laurie had designated herself as my mother’s keeper … Read more...