Grief In Parts

(Short Story- Part One)

Discovering

I found out about the cancer when my mother was bedridden in the hospital. By the look on her face, I gathered she didn’t even want to tell me but she had to, seeing that she had an oxygen mask and an IV hanging beside her.

I knew I’d lose my mom early; she was 45 when she had me. But I just didn’t expect it to be a few months after starting my freshman year of college at NYU.

My 9 a.m. class was a few minutes in, and I had a death grip on my coffee as I drank it as fast I could, burning my tastebuds as I attempted to rejuvenate myself quickly. I took a long blink before the vibration of my phone woke me back up and I squinted to see my mother’s picture staring back at me. I narrowed my eyes, knowing she wouldn’t be calling without a reason. I haphazardly shoved my things into my backpack and ran out of the lecture hall, picking up breathlessly on the last ring. “What’s up, mom?”

“Hi, is this Harper?” The woman on the phone asked. My breath hitched and I barely managed to squeak out a response.

“Umm, yes this is.”

“Hi Harper, I am one of your mother’s nurses down at Denver Health…” I drowned out the rest before somehow managing to quickly book the last seat on the first flight back to Colorado.

I rushed back to my dorm, throwing as many clothes as I could in my suitcase before heading to the airport. The nurse didn’t tell me much other than I needed to get there as soon as possible, which didn’t necessarily help with my fear of planes. There had only been a handful of times during my childhood when my mother had gotten a cold or the flu, I had a gut feeling this was worse than what the nurse was letting on.

I wasn’t originally going to go to NYU, in fact, my mother had to convince me to go. If you couldn’t gather by now, my mom and I are incredibly close similar to Lorelai and Rory Gilmore’s relationship. I hadn’t spent much, or any time really, away from my mom, so to live in a whole other state? It wasn’t even a consideration.

It was, however, something that my mother pined for. She attended NYU and seeing as though I wanted to be a writer, it seemed fitting. But for the entire plane ride home all I could think about was how I wished I was closer.

A few hours later I stood outside the automatic doors of the hospital, afraid of what I’d see when I’d arrive at her room. At reception, I asked for her name and embarked on the confusing journey to her room that involved so many twists and turns that I’m surprised I even was able to find it. I read plaque Room 4052 and took a big breath in and rounded the corner to her room. Frankly, it still didn’t register in my mind that she was even sick until I saw her lying in that hospital bed with so many tubes and wires I could barely see her under them.

I walked over to the side of her bed and sat down in the chair next to it, thankful there was a chair as I felt like my legs could collapse at any moment. She was asleep, though based on the pained contorted look on her face it didn’t seem peaceful whatsoever. I blinked away a few tears that formed and reached for her hand and gave it a tiny squeeze which accidentally woke her up. Her piercing blue eyes seemed duller somehow as she focused her eyes on me, a small smile forming underneath the oxygen mask. With her other hand, she smoothened out her hair out of habit, surely feeling out of her element as she usually had her perfect greying hair in a new style instead of the mess it was on the pillow.

I tried pulling my hand from hers, afraid that it would be too much for her, but she held on as tight as she could. I knew she wasn’t up for being badgered with a million questions, but I couldn’t help myself from asking, “Why didn’t you tell me?”

She took off her oxygen mask, her lips white as a sheet. “I didn’t know how t-to tell you.”

“How bad is it?”

My mom sighed and looked away from me for a second before responding, “Stage four.”

I gasped, let go of her hand, and stood up quickly. I paced around the room while she watched, not saying a word as I tried to process this as fast as I could. “What about your treatments, are they helping?”

“I haven’t had any treatments, honey.”

My shoes scuffed the floor from stopping abruptly, which made my mom wince. Why hasn’t she done any treatments?

“What do you mean? We could’ve paid for the treatments, Mom. We have all that money you saved for my college.”

She instantly shook her head at this statement. “That money is yours.”

“We could’ve fought this.”

She sighed, looking as though she wished she could escape from this conversation as much as I did. “I didn’t want to do that. I sure as hell didn’t want to be hooked up to machines, withering away for whatever time I had left, and I certainly didn’t want you seeing me like that…” She took a big, pained breath in before continuing, “I’ve lived a great life, honey, and I know you’ll have a great life without me. I just wish I could be in it longer.”

She died at 7:03 p.m., only a few hours after I learned about the cancer. Between one of my inconsolable sobbing fits, the nurse who called me took me to a bereavement room to talk next steps. “I know this is hard, but I need to ask this. Do you know if she wanted to be buried or cremated?”

A wave of nausea washed over me at this question, which the nurse seemed to notice and she gave me a cup of water. “Cremated, I think.”

“Okay. I only have a few more questions, Harper.” I nodded and answered the best I could, but I was lost in my own world.

As the nurse wrapped up the questions, she gave me a contact for a grief counselor and my mom’s belongings before I walked out of the hospital. By the time I left, it was approaching 10 p.m. and was freezing. Luckily, I had my winter coat as my car was at my mom’s house and I didn’t necessarily want to cry in an Uber. The four-mile trek home was long, especially with having to drag my suitcase behind me, and I couldn’t feel a thing which was partly because of the cold and because I didn’t want to.

Sometime later, I stood in the driveway, a million thoughts running through my mind but the main one was how weird it felt to walk in there without her. I pushed them aside, feeling exhaustion creeping up on me as I slowly walked to the front door and unlocked it. I flipped the light switch on and nearly jumped when I heard Marty’s paws hit the floor as he sprinted towards me. He wiggled around for a few minutes as I petted him before he took me to his empty food bowl. I filled it to the brim and spilled some on the floor as his impatience caused me to drop the bag. I bent down to clean up the mess, but seeing as he had already scarfed down the majority of his food within seconds, I decided to leave it and head to bed. I collapsed into my childhood bed moments later, and my cries filled the silent house for the rest of the night.

The Empty House

I never had a longing to have a sibling until this moment. I was quite content with it just being my mom and I, and maybe for selfish reasons I liked being an only child because I got all of the attention. But now, in this quiet house, I wish I had someone else to share this grief with.

I hadn’t navigated death before so when I woke up the next morning, my face dry with streaks of tears, I forgot she was even gone. Marty was asleep on the bed beside me so I carefully slid out of the covers and headed to the living room before catching a light that was still on in my mom’s bedroom. I couldn’t bring myself to go into her room the night before, but frankly, I didn’t even notice it. I managed to take a few steps toward the room and stopped at the doorway, my eyes teared up at how normal her room looked as if she’d be coming back to it. Her bed was unmade, though it was most of the time, and she had clothes folded neatly into stacks on the floor with some dirty clothes thrown haphazardly into the hamper. She also had a half-drunken coffee sitting on her nightstand that I quickly took into the kitchen to wash after turning off the light as I no longer was able to spend another second in there. It was in a mug that I had made her in one of my art classes at school. It was nothing special, a turquoise and blue mixture of colors with the rim slightly lopsided, but there was never a morning where I didn’t see her drink from it. Despite having her cabinets filled to the brim with other mugs, she only used that one. After the mug dried, I placed it back where it belonged and tidied up the rest of the house as best as I could, still wanting to feel her presence there and not disrupt the house too much.

My mom bought this quaint two-bedroom house a few months after I was born. The sole purpose of her buying this house was because it’s on the same street as the elementary school. She’d always tell me that she wanted to walk me to school and home from school every day like her mom used to, and this house was perfect for that. We’d get up a few minutes early every day and would make the walk over, rain or shine.

While I would grow annoyed with walking in the rain with a flimsy umbrella on the way to school or stepping through several inches of snow, I couldn’t imagine growing up in any other house. Every couple of months, the house would change in some shape or form, my mom would either grow tired of the paint covering the walls or would buy a new decoration to spruce it up.

My mom would pick out a new lively paint whether that was a bright purple or green and we’d paint for hours on whatever wall she wanted updated. After that, we’d spend hours in a Home Goods and shove things into the cart to redecorate. If you couldn’t tell, our house was cluttered seeing as she rarely departed with any of the hundreds of decorations we bought over the years.

And while I used to love walking around our house and remembering those moments of being splattered with paint or placing our newly bought decorations in the best spot within the house, but now standing in this house I realize she was what made our house a home. And now it’s just empty.