For as long as I can recall, my Mom has told me that she wrote a famous song and it was stolen from her when she was just a teenager. She lived in Detroit at the time, was a professional singer and songwriter, at the age of 16. She was in the right place, at the right time, and is a talented songwriter who has written so many other songs, and so it totally made sense.

Similarly, the publishers of the song have a reputation for having stolen songs from young, naive songwriters like her, so the story has always been credible. My Grandparents even told me this story, and so did Mom of course, and while it was always baffling to me that nobody ever took any legal action, I knew my family to be non-litigious and peaceful, and so it made sense and I accepted it. By the time I heard the story, at least 15 years had passed since the song's release, and Mom's claim, like any of these kinds of long-dormant claims, lose credibility with each passing year. They prompt the completely logical defense which asks "So why didn't you say something earlier?"

So it was always Mom's great story of the one that got away. A pity, a slight, and one seemingly too enormous and difficult to put right.

Over the decades, I have told this story, often with her present, as it is an interesting part of our family history. I've probably told it to hundreds of people. She has probably also told it to hundreds of people. Family, partners, husbands, friends, industry people, fans of her career who became friends.

I am 50 now. Mom is 72, and not in the best health. I wanted to right this wrong before she died, so I contacted a woman who is a Forensic Musicologist and lawyer, who I had read was able to connect writers to works, based on patterns, word choice, and other variables that act as a kind of fingerprint of the writer. I emailed her my Mom's claim and two days later, I received a very thoughtful and lengthy reply, with a dozen questions that would have to be answered in order to proceed. i sat with Mom and went through the questions to see if she needed help and she didn't. That was three days ago.

Today, she tells me that it was a lie that she had told to everyone from the very start, and I am absolutely gutted. Admittedly, when she began with this lie, she was just 16, and children lie but the lie has been perpetuated for decades. She and I are very close, and we've had tons of heart-to-heart conversations and confidences. There were thousands of opportunities for her to come clean. Thousands. In the scheme of things, it doesn't matter. I'll thank the Forensic Musicologist for her time and tell her that my Mom is too infirm to recall any more details than what I gave initially, and so we have no real case.

I don't know if I should just let it go, and not tell anyone other than my therapist about it, and allow her to save face. I don't think revealing her to be a liar to my friends, her friends, or family would be helpful.

I just feel so f-ing betrayed, and disappointed. Not that it really matters if she wrote the song or not, but it's just such a part of our history, our life, our story, and knowing that it's not true certainly casts doubt on so many other things.

On the other hand, I cannot imagine this was an easy admission for her, and I respect her courage for coming clean about it. She was so upset she couldn't even cry. I don't have kids but would imagine it is very hard to disappoint them with something like this.

Mom and I will be fine, of course. We are the only real family left and we'll get past this, and I have compassion, but I am not going to comfort her and tell her it's okay, because it isn't okay. It just isn't.