My mother has dementia and I spent about sixty thousand dollars of her money before she went into memory care.

I had power of attorney from 2019. I was the one who moved back, I was the one who did four years of this, and my sister sent flowers on Mother's Day from Portland.

The sixty thousand wasn't theft in the dramatic sense. It was: my mortgage for nine months when I cut to part-time to care for her. A used car when mine died, because I needed to drive her to appointments. My daughter's braces. A roof.

Every one of those has a defense. I've made every one of those defenses to myself, out loud, in the car.

What I can't defend is that I never asked. I had the authority and I used it and I never once wrote my sister an email saying "this is what I'm taking and why." It would have taken twenty minutes. I didn't do it because I knew what she'd say, and because some part of me felt owed.

She's in memory care now and it's seven thousand a month and the money ran out faster than the projections said it would. We're selling the house. My sister is handling the paperwork from Portland because I can't face the realtor.

And at some point an accountant is going to look at four years of statements.

I don't know if I'm writing this because I'm afraid of being caught or because I'd rather say it first. Both, probably.

Has anyone been the caregiver who took something? Not the villain version. The version where you earned it and still took it wrong.