I believed I was prepared for this.
After her second fall, the decision became clear—the house was too much for her. She needed to be near family, and I had the room. So she moved into my guest room, and together, we tried to make it feel like home. Matching sweaters, her favorite meals, soft jazz humming in the background. It was… nice, even comforting.
Then the oddities began.
She’d set extra plates at the table, insisting we had company when it was just us. I chalked it up to the memory lapses her doctor had warned about.
Then last week, I found her in the hallway at 2 a.m., facing the blank wall as if waiting for someone to step through.
But yesterday—yesterday was different.
We were having dinner, just the two of us, like always. Golden sunset light spilled over the table as I served her favorite, chicken pot pie. We talked about small things—her roses, the neighbor’s yappy terrier, the novel I’d lent her that she hadn’t cracked yet. A perfectly ordinary evening—until she looked up at me with a smile that didn’t reach her eyes.
“Thank you, Emma,” she said, voice tender.
Emma?
I froze, ladle hovering over my plate. “Mom… my name is Sarah.”
She blinked, confused. “Don’t be silly. You’ve always been Emma.”
My pulse spiked. Emma? In thirty-two years, she’d never once called me that. I tried to brush it off—another slip, another sign of the Alzheimer’s creeping in. But the way she said it, so certain, made my skin prickle.
“Mom, who’s Emma?” I asked carefully.
She sighed, pushing her plate away. “You. My bright little girl, playing in the garden with your doll. Just like always.”
Her words didn’t fit. Like she was remembering a life I wasn’t part of.
That night, after tucking her in, I paced the living room, grasping for answers. Then it hit me—a memory from childhood. Emma. My imaginary friend, long forgotten. A little girl I’d played with at age five. But why would Mom—?
The next morning, I dug through old photo albums. There it was: a picture of me at five, grinning in the yard, clutching a tattered doll. Behind me, Mom stood with an odd, distant look—not at me, but at empty space beside me.
A cold realization slithered down my spine.
I called Nancy, her oldest friend. When I mentioned Emma, the line went silent. Then, quietly: “Sarah… your mother had a daughter before you. Emma. She only lived a year.”
The world tilted. Emma wasn’t imaginary. She’d been real. A sister I never knew. A loss Mom had buried so deep even she sometimes forgot—until now.
That afternoon, I took Mom’s hand as she called me Emma again. This time, I didn’t correct her. “I know about her,” I whispered. “And I know you loved her.”
Tears spilled down her cheeks. “I didn’t want to forget her. I didn’t mean to—”
“I know,” I said, squeezing her fingers. “But you don’t have to hide her anymore.”
In that moment, I understood: grief never really leaves. It waits, folded quietly inside us, until it’s ready to be seen. And when it finally surfaces, the only thing to do is hold it—together.
If you’re carrying a sorrow you’ve never named, remember: some wounds need air to heal. And you don’t have to bear them alone.