Ten Years
By Sarah Hauser
@sarah.j.hauser
It’s been ten years since she died.
That February morning a decade ago, I’d been sleeping in my old bedroom, the one I’d slept in for years before moving away as an adult. The red, sponge-painted walls were now painted a calming blue-white hue. A queen-sized guest bed replaced my old twin one, complete with a new Pottery Barn duvet, fluffy pillows, and matching shams. I had been the last one to move out, the last one of six kids to enter adulthood, and the decor in my parents’ house seemed to have grown up with me.
Knowing my mom was nearing the end, my husband and I had traveled from Chicago to New Jersey to stay with my parents and be with the rest of our family. I tossed and turned all night in that big bed, wishing I could slide under the sheets and back into my childhood, back to the years when Mom wasn’t sick and death felt distant.
I heard my brother knock firmly on the bedroom door. “Yah?” I answered, sitting up and rubbing my eyes. “It’s happening,” he said.
I jumped out of bed, threw on a sweatshirt, and rushed downstairs to my parents’ room at the end of the hall on the main level. My siblings and my dad sat gathered next to the hospital bed set up in her room. Mom gasped for air, her chest heaving as her body tried to fight what was about to happen. Any minute, she was going to die, right there in front of me.
***
“She would be so proud of you,” my sister texts a few days before the ten-year anniversary of Mom’s death. I don’t quite know how to respond. Would she? I hope so, I think. I reply with a “thank you” and tell her how grateful I am for her. I reflect for a moment about how I’m thankful for all the women in my life who stepped in and stepped up in ways I never want to take for granted.
Most years, the anniversary of her death isn’t one of those extra hard days for me. Maybe it’s because after such a long and ugly battle with cancer, I felt almost a sense of relief when she died. It’s finally over, I remember thinking. Not that I wanted my mom to die. But I wanted her suffering to end. We’d all grieved for so long and watched her deteriorate so dramatically. It was time.
But ten years feels significant, not just because of the double-digit number or the fact that I can now use the word “decade.” So much of my life has been lived in those ten years. So much change has happened to me, to my family. And Mom hasn’t been there for any of it.
***
The summer before she died, my family got together for a vacation, knowing it was probably the last time we’d all be together while she was still alive. We sat around in the family room of a beach house one night, talking about her health and what home hospice care would look like. And as she sat there, skin sagging and eyes struggling to stay open, all I could think about was, Mom won’t be there when I have kids.
She won’t be there when I call to announce I’m pregnant—and then call back a week later with an updated announcement: twins! She won’t throw me a shower or wander with me through the aisles of Target as I register for diapers and onesies and pacifiers. She won’t remind me of all the gear I won’t need, saying in her matter-of-fact tone, “I never had that with any of you kids, and we were fine.” She’ll never hold my babies or FaceTime them on their birthdays, fly out to babysit or fill my freezer with meals. She’ll never listen to me when I try to process postpartum anxiety, depression, and rage—pains of motherhood I think she may have shared. But I’ll never get to ask.
My mind scrolled through the myriad memories that would never be. And I wept.
***
“Who’s Nana?” my seven-year-old daughter asks. I’ve told my kids plenty of times, but they sometimes forget. Still, every time they ask, it stings a little. They have no memory of her, of course, and that reality feels like a gut punch every time I think about it. The twins were born two years after she died, our third two years later, our fourth an additional four years after that. I’ve got a few pictures around the house, but not as many as I’d like, thanks to the fact that my four beloved humans tend to be less than careful around fragile items. I don’t want to risk those picture frames breaking.
“Nana was my mom,” I explain again. “She died before you were born.” I can already feel my throat tightening and my eyes welling up. I wish I could tell them more about her; I want to. But I can’t seem to utter more than a few words without needing to run out of the room to wipe my eyes.
***
We’re going back to New Jersey in a few months. My whole crew—husband, four kids, and loud rescue dog—will cram into our minivan and drive along Interstate 80 for 13 (or more) hours. We’ve rented a cabin for the week not far from where we’ll celebrate my dad’s 80th birthday. The house I grew up in, the one with the cedar siding, bluestone patio, and pipes that shook if the shower temperature wasn’t turned perfectly left of center was sold to someone else years ago. Getting rid of it felt like a weight lifted at the time. The house where eight of us once lived was a big and unnecessary burden for my dad to bear.
I’m thinking about driving by the house when we’re in town, maybe knocking on the door and asking if we can mosey around the yard. I want to show my kids the hill where I went sledding and the wooded area where my brother and I used to make forts. I want to see if the massive oak tree still stands, the one we attached a tire swing to all those years ago. I want to explain where my mom planted flowers and laugh as I remember how much I grumbled when we had to pull weeds.
But I don’t know if I’m ready to stand there at the edge of the yard, remembering the room where she died and the front door they carried her out of in a body bag. I don’t know if I want to see the changes the new owners have made, if they’ve kept the garden beds where they were or ripped out the bushes around the yard’s perimeter. I’m torn. I want my kids to know this house. I want them to know her. But every time I try to tell them, every time I try to show them who she was, the words get stuck in my throat and I swallow them back down. Why is this still so hard?
***
“Is Nana her real name?” one of my kids asks. “No, her name was Charlotte. Nana is just another word like grandma,” I tell him. I want them to keep asking questions, to keep probing for stories. But I also don’t feel like crying at the moment, and I’m relieved that they’re quickly distracted by Hot Wheels and the bowl of chips on the table. If I want them to know more, I’m going to have to make it a point to share. Maybe as they get older, they’ll ask questions on their own, but for now, Nana is sort of “out of sight, out of mind,” for them. But not a day has gone by when she’s been out of mind for me.
***
Ten years, four kids, and a whole lot of life has passed since she died. They say time heals all wounds, but I don’t know. I suppose the grief isn’t as sharp, the waves of emotion not quite so high, the valleys not quite so dark as they once were. But the grief is still there because the memory is still there, the memory of her, of our family, of that house, of her food. How do I pass along her memory to my kids without passing grief along with it?
For now, I remind my oldest son the Autumn Chowder he loves is her recipe, one I watched her make dozens of times. I comment about how Nana probably would have hated our dog, and the thought makes me laugh. Dog hair and loud barking were not appreciated in our childhood home. I tell them about my mom’s sharp wit that was sometimes painfully sharp, other times hilariously so. I make sure my daughter knows the doll clothes stored in her room aren’t just any doll clothes, but ones Nana sewed herself. The purple and green quilt they snuggle under on the couch was made by her, too, the blue stemware we use on special occasions, ones she bought, the pineapple chicken we eat, a recipe she cooked at least a couple times a month.
There’s so much I want to tell my kids, so much I want to explain about the hole that’s been left in the last ten years. But today, I’ll just tell them bits and pieces. And someday, with tears in my eyes and a knot in my stomach, I know I’ll tell them a whole lot more.
Sarah J. Hauser is a writer and speaker living in the Chicago suburbs with her husband and four kids. Through theology, stories, and the occasional recipe, she helps others find nourishment for their soul. She loves cooking but rarely follows a recipe exactly, and you can almost always find her with a cup of coffee in hand. Her first book, All Who Are Weary: Finding True Rest by Letting Go of the Burdens You Were Never Meant to Carry (Moody) releases in April, 2023. Check out her monthly newsletter or find her on Instagram.
Photo by Jennifer Floyd.