After a mom is gone

When FOF Laura (I am not using her real name) died suddenly two years ago, following an operation, her 28-year-old daughter went into a tailspin. She isolated herself for almost a year, lost her job as an attorney and started using cocaine, her best friend told me. “Her car also disappeared, but whenever I ask where it is, she tells me ‘in the shop,’ which I know is a lie.”

The young woman lives with her father, who cries about her situation and feels helpless. As a mother of a 29-year-old daughter, the whole situation makes me heartsick. I wish I could help this daughter. She was close with her mother, her friend told me. “She keeps praying to her, and when I tell her that her mother would be upset at what she’s doing now. she becomes angry.”

As much as we want to protect our kids their whole lives, we obviously can’t, certainly not when we’re gone. Who knows whether this young woman would have succumbed to drugs, even if her mom was alive.  Maybe she was emotionally vulnerable to start with, and her mom’s death made it worse.

I pray she figures it all out.