We entered our mother’s room tentatively, both of us holding our breath. Sarah had given me a rundown of what to expect, but seeing her in the bed with all of the wires and tubes, screens beeping, essentially keeping her alive, made me shrink back into the doorframe. Adding in the overpowering antiseptic smells made the whole thing a sensory nightmare.
This wasn’t how I wanted to remember her, I thought to myself. I wanted to remember her out in the barn, feeding calves. I wanted to remember her climbing the ridge to the orchard every morning. I wanted to remember her on her hands and knees in her garden, planting every spring and harvesting every fall.
“It’s okay.” Sarah was behind me and squeezed my shoulder. “It’s still her. I know it’s scary, seeing her like this. But you can go sit and talk to her. The nurses said it could help. There can only be two people in here at a time, so I’ll be in the waiting room.”
It was then that I noticed the dark-haired figure sitting by my mother’s bedside, hands folded, head bowed. My father, Phillip Chambers. A quiet, solemn man, he didn’t feature in my childhood memories as prominently as my mother did. He was always out on the farm, fixing tractors, helping a cow with a stuck calf, or mending a fence.
He spent more time with my brothers than any of the girls, bringing them up in the ways of the farm. He was always around, but he wasn’t always present. We all ate dinner together, and all went to church together, but I couldn’t recall any specific one-on-one time with him. He’d never put me to bed, or brought me along to fix something on his never-ending to-do list, or taken me out for an ice cream.
But that day, he got up out of his chair to greet me. “Hannah.” I wasn’t sure if I should hug him or shake his hand. Neither seemed right, so I gave a thin smile. He was equally unsure how to proceed.
“Hi, Dad.”
“I—” was I imagining his voice cracking, or was that what I wanted to hear? “I’m glad you made it home,” he finished, and his eyes shone with what looked like tears.
“Me, too.”
“Here, sit. I’ll grab this one over here.” He stood, and gave me an awkward hug. I couldn’t remember the last time he’d hugged me.
I sat down next to my mother, unsure how to address the woman I hadn’t seen in nearly ten years. The woman who raised me, but also put the burden of raising me onto my older siblings. The woman who showed me how to bottle-feed a kitten with such care, but also would smack me with an open palm if I talked back. The woman who read Bible stories to me, but scoffed when I asked her to read me anything else. The paradoxes were not lost on me as I stood over her, our roles reversed. She was the vulnerable one now.
I sat down next to her, and waited a beat. “Hi, Mom,” I started. “It’s Hannah. I’m…I’m back home. Sarah called me and told me to come. My flight just landed. And…I’m here now. And I know we’ve had our issues and differences and we haven’t talked in a long time, but I hope you get better and I want you to know I love you.”
As I said it, I knew that, despite our complicated relationship, it was true. Despite the setbacks I faced in my life, I wouldn’t have been where I was at that moment without the adversity she provided. Every trial I’d gone through had sharpened me in some way, made me the woman I was. And, looking back, I knew she was doing what she thought was right, living how she thought was the best way to live.
But there was something else. There was the fact she couldn’t—wouldn’t—reply. When she was still in a coma, I could be magnanimous. I could be forgiving. I could be the dutiful daughter. I could make her whoever I wanted her to be in my head. So why not embrace it? I was already here.
In my head, she forgave me, too. She was sorry, she was so sorry. She was downright contrite, even. She was ashamed of how she’d acted, that things worked out the way they had, that she’d hurt me so badly. She wanted what was best for me, even if that meant living a thousand miles away.
Of course, there was no response from her. Wherever she was, whether on this earth or on her way to whatever heaven she believed so fervently in, she wasn’t responding to me. I looked around, unsure of what to do next after I’d poured my heart out.
“Do you mind if I work while I’m here?” I asked my dad. “I’m on a deadline.”
He shook his head, and I cracked open my laptop at my mom’s bedside and got to work on my Martha piece. Maybe it was something in the air—being so much closer to family than I’d been in years, being on the land I grew up on. I was inspired, and the words flowed out of me.
Thanks for reading a little too online! This post is public so feel free to share it.
The hours passed in a blur, and by the time the nurse stopped by to tell me I needed to leave, I’d sent off a polished draft to Danny, who replied minutes later, telling me he was running it tomorrow with minimal edits, and also, he missed me. I was thrilled, and wrote back I was excited to see it in print, and also I missed him. The nurse gently prodded me to leave, and I bundled everything into my bag and kissed my mom on the cheek.
“I’ll be back, okay, Momma?” I whispered.
My dad took his truck back to the house, and I rode with Sarah.
“Everything okay?” she asked as we wound through the country roads towards home.
“Yeah,” I said. “I really think it is. I’m glad I came.”
“I’m glad you did too. You ready to see everyone else?”
For some reason, I hadn’t registered the fact I’d be seeing my other siblings besides Sarah. Facing down your siblings when you haven’t seen them for over a decade was one thing. But when there were eleven of them? That was next level. “Wait. Where am I staying? Where are you staying?”
“If you’re okay with it, we can bunk together in our old room. Mom and Dad kept the bunkbeds for some unfathomable reason. Cousin sleepovers, maybe? Otherwise, Miriam said you can sleep on her couch. I was at Bess’s, but I thought you’d want me with you and she doesn’t have room. Seth said everyone is waiting for us at home, and they’re excited to see you.”
The statement didn’t track. My siblings, who hadn’t tried to get in touch with me over the past ten years, were waiting at home for me? They offered up their own homes for me to stay at? I couldn’t square it with the reality I’d been telling myself back in New York, that everyone back in Wisconsin hated me and didn’t care what I was doing, that they wanted me to fail. And on top of that, was I ready to sleep in my childhood bedroom? I didn’t have much of a choice.
“No, it’s fine,” I said. “I’ll stay at home as long as you’re there too.”
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