This weekend, Mom took Gilly to Montreal. Some have asked if I'm jealous, and honestly, no. Not about this particular thing. I do not envy anyone who has to spend an entire weekend sharing a train car and hotel room with my mother. For those who don't know, my mother is both physically and mentally disabled, from multiple sclerosis attacking her brain and bipolar disorder making her unstable. Basically, my mom is the mental equivalent of a 6-year-old. She doesn't understand propriety or safety or logic or hygiene or any of those things adults need to get along safely in the world.

So they arrived in Toronto tonightabout 8:30PM, and Mom's scooter had almost no battery power left in it. She had decided not to pack her battery charger for the trip, and Gilly had had to push her around in her scooter since Saturday night.

So the plan was for Al to pick Gilly up in Gilly's car and take her home. Last I had heard, Mom's plan for the weekend was to park her van at the Newmarket GO terminal and take a bus to Union to catch the train on Friday, and do the reverse to get home. I happened to be coming into the Toronto area about 8PM, so I called Mom's cell and asked if she wanted me to pick her up instead.

"That would be great," she said. "I'm parked across the street in the Royal York parking." After a brief and confusing exchange, I found out that Mom had missed her bus in Newmarket on Friday and ended up driving downtown and parking there for the weekend. I told her there was no point in me picking her up, that Gilly and Al could help her get her crippled scooter and luggage to the van. I said she could call me when she got home and I'd help her carry everything up to her condo.

So I phoned about 9:15PM, and Mom said she hadn't left Union yet and wouldn't be home for ages. Gilly had told her to go through the Air Canada Centre to get to a specific meeting spot, and then had set off to retrieve Mom's van. The problem was that Mom had forgotten which of the Royal York's parking garages she had parked in, and had directed Gilly to the wrong one. Gilly's phone was unreachable at this point, and Mom didn't hear from her until Gilly called her all pissed off and yelling and so on because she couldn't find the van. Gilly told her she was sick of looking and was leaving.

So my mom was abandoned at Union Station at 10PM on a Sunday night with a scooter with a dead battery. Gilly and Al had her luggage and were taking it back to Kitchener with them. The luggage contains my mom's medical supplies, including her antibiotics for a raging bladder infection.

When Mom called and told me this, I was furious. You cannot abandon a childlike woman who is unable to walk more than a few steps in a train station in the middle of the night. I called Gilly and told her what she did was dangerous, and she never should have left Mom in an unsafe situation like that. She yelled at me, then Al took the phone and yelled at me and said that Mom should call 911 if she didn't feel safe. The ting is, Mom doesn't call for help until she's in over her head, such as having fallen somewhere or something. She was sitting in a train station alone, trying to convince strangers to push her to her van.

I looked up the phone number for the Royal York, hoping that perhaps they might have some ideas on how to help. I called Mom to give her their number, and she said she was at the van. Half an hour had passed since she was abandoned. A young man had come walking by, carrying a hockey stick. Mom asked him if he wanted to make some money by helping her out, and he said no money was required. He pushed her several blocks in the snow to her van, then helped her lift her scooter into the trunk. He refused to accept any money, saying he had recently grauated from university and had gotten himself a job that pays very well. Mom thanked him profusely and set off home.

So I was very relieved to hear my mom was safe, and grateful to the kind stranger who helped her out. I'm still feeling angry with Gilly and Al for just leaving her there without thought for her safety. It's equivalent to child abandonment. They claimed they couldn't have done anything else anyway. That's just pure laziness!

Al said he was waiting for 90 minutes in a place where he couldn't park and help Gilly push Mom. However, they could have had Mom pay for parking for Gilly's car. When I mentioned this to Mom, she said it had crossed her mind but she didn't mention it as Gilly was so irate.

They could have pushed her across the road and left her (and possibly her bags) in the hotel lobby, where she would have been safe and could have asked the hotel staff to retrieve her car.

One of them could have stayed with the scooter at the train station while the other drove Mom to her car, and then Mom could have returned and picked up her scooter.

But no. Nothing else matters but how put out they are. Forget that Mom could have been injured or mugged, or stuck in Toronto overnight without medication or catheters or clean clothing. "I'm tired and I want to go home and sleep!"

The other problem came up when Mom got to her van and realised she needed her American Express card to get out of the garage, as she'd scanned it on the way in. Gilly had that credit card in her pocket, since she was supposed to pick up the van. So Mom tried calling her, and she wouldn't answer. I text messaged her, and also got no response. In the end, Mom had to plead with the security guard to find some fee for her to pay with a different credit card so she could get out. My mom was charged $78.

So at 11PM, I answered my mom's call and met her at her building, pushed her upstairs and got her settled in. Me, the demon spawn, the daughter hated for so many years. And Gilly the Golden Child never called to find out if her mother had gotten home safely.

Am I the only person that sees something wrong with all this? (Clearly not, as I told Ellen and Brian about it when I got here and they were also disgusted.)