The Silence After

The house feels so empty now. I walk through rooms that still smell like her lavender hand cream and expect to hear her voice calling from the kitchen. It’s been two weeks since we lost Mom to ovarian cancer, and the hollow feeling in my chest has only grown deeper with each passing day.

“Emily, honey, are you eating?” My aunt Susan calls twice a day to check on me. “Your mother would want you to take care of yourself.”

I manage a weak “yes” even though the refrigerator is filled with untouched casseroles from well-meaning neighbors. Food tastes like nothing these days.

Mom was everything to me, and it’s not just because she chose me. Well, that part matters too.

I was five when she and Dad adopted me, a scared little girl with a too-big backpack and trust issues that ran bone-deep.

They already had Mark, their biological son, who was eight and blessed with Mom’s dimples and Dad’s confident smile.

“This is your sister,” Mom had told him, her hand warm on my shoulder.

“And this is your forever home,” she’d whispered to me later that night when I couldn’t sleep.

Those weren’t just words. She lived them. Every single day.

Dad was wonderful too. He was patient and kind and taught me to ride a bike.

But when he passed away from a heart attack eight years after I came home, it was Mom who became my entire world. She showed up to every dance recital with flowers, stayed up late helping with science projects, and held me through my first heartbreak at 16.

“Blood doesn’t make a family,” she would say whenever anyone made thoughtless comments about adoption. “Love does.”

We were inseparable, especially after I graduated college.

I took a job at a design firm just 20 minutes from her house because I couldn’t imagine being far away. Weekend brunches, impromptu movie nights, holiday traditions… we did it all together.

Then the diagnosis came. Ovarian cancer, stage three.

“We’ll fight this,” I promised her in the sterile hospital room where the doctor had delivered the news, his eyes already carrying a resignation that terrified me.

For two years, that’s exactly what we did.

Two years of chemo, of doctors who never made eye contact, of late-night ER visits and pain that stole her voice, piece by piece.

And through all of that? I was there. Every. Single. Day.

I moved into her house. Cooked every bland meal that wouldn’t make her sick. Helped her bathe when her body failed her. Sat beside her in the hospice while her hands trembled in mine.

And Mark? He only visited twice.

Once for her birthday, bringing an expensive bouquet that made Mom smile despite the pain medication making her drowsy.

Once for five minutes after she was moved to the hospice. Just long enough to say, “I can’t handle seeing her like this” and leave.

He lived three hours away in Chicago. Had a successful career in finance. A beautiful wife. Two kids Mom barely knew.

But that’s not why he didn’t show up. It’s because he didn’t want to.

And still, I never held that against him. Mom didn’t either.

“Everyone grieves differently,” she would say on nights when disappointment made her eyes shine with unshed tears after he canceled yet another visit. “Mark just needs time.”

But time was the one thing she didn’t have.