I was scrolling through social media as usual—cat videos, recipes, the latest weight loss challenge—when suddenly, I froze. There, on someone else’s photo, was my son, Sasha, in the arms of a woman I didn’t know, with the chilling caption: ‘My boy forever.’ The familiar gray eyes, that funny curl on his head, the dimple on his cheek—my Sasha. But the background was foreign, unfamiliar hands wrapped around him, and this icy hashtag: #myboyforever.
My heart lurched as if someone had ripped the air from my lungs. I pressed my phone to my chest and sank down onto the kitchen floor. Sasha had left for another city a week ago to study. We didn’t call every day, but I told myself he was grown up; I shouldn’t smother him. Yesterday, he didn’t answer my call—I assumed he was busy, caught up in exams or friends. And today, I see him on a stranger’s account, on a woman’s page who looked about forty-five, with the words: ‘The one who brought me back to life when I had stopped believing in anything.’
I opened her profile, which was locked. Only a few recent photos were visible: flowers, a gravestone, candles, and somewhere among them was my laughing boy in a tracksuit, hugging that woman. She had few followers, almost no comments—except one username under every picture: my son’s. “How are you, Marina Alexandrovna?” “Don’t forget to eat.” “I’ll visit this weekend, I promise.” And the last message: “You’re like a mother to me. Thank you for being there.”
That phrase hit me hardest. I reread it ten times. Like a mother. I sat in the tiny kitchen where every corner echoed his footsteps, where his kindergarten drawing hung on the fridge, and somewhere far away, he was writing to another woman: ‘You’re like a mother to me.’ My mind rang with the word betrayal. So all those cold “I’ll call later” messages, the silences—they were for her.
I dialed his number—only rings, no answer. In the messenger, the last message was two days old: “Mom, don’t wait for me this weekend, something came up.” I wrote back: “What kind of things? Who is Marina Alexandrovna?” The message stayed on one checkmark. My hands shook, panic grew in my chest, but alongside it, anger flared. I found an old notebook among his things with his dorm address. Within an hour, I was on the train, clutching my phone and repeating like a mantra: “I’ll find out. I have the right to know what my son’s life is about.”
In the dorm, a sleepy girl with purple hair opened the door. She frowned when I asked about Sasha.
“Who are you to him?”
“I’m his mother,” I said louder than I intended.
Her eyes cleared instantly; she paled and whispered:
“Come with me… But you need to be strong, okay?”
At that moment, I knew something terrible was happening. Still, I thought the most ordinary thing—maybe he had an accident, or was sick, anything but this. We walked down a long hallway; she stopped at a door and knocked. There was no answer.
“He’s… he’s not here now,” she swallowed hard. “He’s in the hospice. With Marina Alexandrovna. They’re practically living there.”
The word “hospice” pierced me like an icy needle. I didn’t comprehend at first.
“What hospice?” I faltered.
“The children’s one,” she averted her gaze. “He’s been volunteering there for a year.”
The world tilted and blurred. A year? A whole year he had been visiting dying children—and I didn’t know? She handed me a piece of paper with the address and quietly added:
“He talks about you all the time. He just didn’t want you to worry.”
The journey to the hospice is a blur. A white building on the outskirts, the scent of medicines and something sweet, walls painted with overly cheerful pictures. At reception, the nurse merely nodded when I gave Sasha’s name:
“Here he is. Third floor, room 307.”
I climbed the stairs, counting each step to keep from thinking. The door to 307 was slightly open. I peeked inside and saw my son. He was sitting on the bed next to a thin, hairless boy, holding his hand and speaking softly. In the corner on a chair sat the woman from the photo—Marina Alexandrovna. Her face was tired, lined with wrinkles, her eyes red from crying.
“Sasha,” I breathed out.
He turned pale, his eyes flicked to Marina, then to me.
“Mom?.. What are you doing here?”
I wanted to rush to him, to hug him, but my legs felt rooted to the floor. Words tumbled out:
“So she’s your… second mother?”
A heavy silence fell over the room. The boy on the bed glanced up, frightened. Marina Alexandrovna rose slowly as if every bone ached.
“Is she your mother?” she asked Sasha quietly, then gave a faint smile. “Finally.”
My son stepped toward me, took my hands.
“Mom, I wanted to tell you… I just didn’t know how. This is Vanya,” he nodded to the boy. “And this is his mom, Marina. Her husband died a year ago. Vanya’s been sick for three years. I stumbled into this place with a student group… and stayed. I… never betrayed you.”
“‘Like a mother’?” I whispered, my throat tightening.
Marina approached, nervously fidgeting with her handkerchief.
“He’s like a son to us,” she said. “And you—your world. Every time he leaves, he says, ‘Mom worries, I need to call.’ I’m sorry if my words hurt you. But when your child looks at you every day through an IV drip and asks if he’ll live until summer… you hold on to anyone around. Your Sasha helped me not to lose my mind.”
I looked at Vanya. He smiled—a wise, grown-up smile.
“Aunt Lena,” he suddenly said, “may I love you a little, too? If… if I don’t grow up, Sasha won’t be alone.”
Those words broke me completely. I sank onto a chair and wept harder than I have since my parents’ funerals. My son leaned into me, Marina laid a hand on my shoulder. Three adults drowning in tears, and one small boy gently stroking my hand and whispering, “Don’t cry, because we all have to leave someday…”—then breaking off as if afraid to finish.
We stayed there till evening. Sasha told me how he worked nights to buy presents for the children, how he came on weekends in place of nurses so they could rest, how he was ashamed to tell me, not wanting me to look at him with the pain I now felt.
As I left the hospice, Marina caught up with me at the door.
“I’m not taking your son away,” she said. “I just sometimes let him cry in my kitchen so he doesn’t break down in front of you.”
I looked into her eyes and for the first time saw not a homewrecker but a mother worn down by daily battles with fate for every extra hour with her child.
“May I… sometimes cry at your place?” I asked.
She nodded, and we hugged—two strangers bound by one boy and one young man.
I returned home late at night. Sasha’s childhood drawing still hung on the kitchen wall. I looked at it and quietly said into the empty room:
“Forgive me, son. For thinking your need to be someone’s rock was betrayal.”
Now, on weekends, I don’t go to the market—I go to the hospice. Marina and I cook soup for the whole shift, Sasha plays with the children, and Vanya tells me about his dream to become a builder—if he gets the chance. Each time I see my grown boy straighten a blanket on another little patient, I think: let him have as many ‘second moms’ and ‘other children’ as he needs, as long as he stays this way—alive, kind, and mine.
And the photo captioned ‘My boy forever’ now stands on my shelf, next to our family picture. Because I no longer envy him for strange pain. I’m learning to share it.
