My mother was homeless and missing for eight years, give or take what felt like a half-life. Especially when you are getting phone calls from the road saying, “We found your mother in a train station, sleeping on the floor. We took her home and gave her a bath, and she told us to call this number.”

She left us many times, but I’ll never forget the time she broke my heart. She moved us to South Carolina to be closer to her sister, to a small, two-bedroom apartment, in Greenville. After not coming out of her room for a week, she appeared one day, took my brothers and me to the window, and said, “Look at that sunset. Every time you see it remember your mother.”

She then started packing her car to leave when we called my aunt, who promptly showed up, and took her to the emergency room. We were moved back to Illinois, and she was hospitalized once again.

She would return to McHenry where the four of us lived together for the last time, in what would be a brief stint. This time when she left, she set out three rings, one for each boy, with a note to “be good to each other.” We knew she was gone because of the hole of clothes missing in her closet, but that’s a different story.

I want to thank Cassandra Weaver and Quora for giving me the strength to return to this memory and write about it. Though not an exercise in pity, but rather a way to release the pain, and help anyone else harboring hurt.