Remembering Hazel Grace

Her Mom's POV

Hi, sad depressingly morbid one-shot written from Hazel's Mom's viewpoint, so… ENJOY! Oh, btw, I just decided that I will give the parents names, as they aren't told in the books…

I remembered Hazel, our baby girl. She was so bright, never mean. Both my husband and I knew that good doesn't last in the world. We ignored that. We thought our child was invincible. As she grew up, she was normal. Hazel loved her friends and her family deeply and passionately. It was perfect until that fateful day when she was diagnosed.

I remember watching her settle down to sleep, and I heard gasping, like an asphyxiating fish. Our girl was having huge spasms as we rushed her to the hospital, feeling alone and scared. My husband and I stayed in the room, as the malignant lights of the end of my old life blinked, showing tumors. David and I sobbed as Hazel's lifeless body was inserted with thick tubes and needles.

"Just know, Hazel, that we love you, and it's okay if you let go."

"Grace…" David's voice trailed off. "I'm scared."

"It's going to be okay," I said, tears welling up in my eyes. Hazel was my daughter, and I could not afford to see her go. I couldn't accept the fact that my baby girl was already going to be leaving at age thirteen. This broke me, and I sobbed, throat burning like I captured a star in my chest, and it was bursting in a supernova inside of me. David put his hand comfortingly around my shoulders, and he shook against me with silent tears. David and I had always supported each other, trying to fix the leaks before our little submarine sank. We sat like this for a while, and fell asleep in the sterile, blank palette of the emergency room. At 2:36 we heard a nurse shake us out of our stupor. Hazel's eyes fluttered weakly, blearily opening to the sad sight of the hospital.

"Hazel, you made it," I said, burying my face into her shoulder.

"We love you, sweetie," David said, hope dawning on his weary face like a sunrise. He pecked me on the lips, Hazel groaning. I pulled away, bustling to her bed worriedly.

"Ew…" she chorused. Hazel still was a normal girl. My daughter was so smart, and so beautiful, and so, so kind. I remember how it was for years. It was years of episodes of America's Next Top Model, sitting at home, taking medications. I knew, though, that Hazel needed to go out, connect. I took my girl to the doctor, who prescribed a support group. And then, once a week, I would drive my griping teenager to the church, which she begged to not go to mostly every week.

I remember seeing her walk out of the church one day with that boy, and my heart had swollen up like an inflated balloon of happiness. Oh, I remember Augustus Waters. He was young, charming, and witty, and every time he came near Hazel Grace, I could tell that her heart was racing with the feeling of being a normal teenage girl. I only wished that this could've lasted forever.

I clearly remember that fateful night, the phone call that would end this period. Augustus Waters, the 17- year old boy, had just been torn down by the disease that had been hunting my daughter for so long, had just passed. I had wondered how Mrs. Waters felt, making that phone call, the wait over.

Now, I know how the great and terrible phone call is. I know how it feels to call your relatives, to have your heart break with each of the words.

I know because for me, the wait is over. You can stall the wait. You can move back in line, and you can slow it. But in the end, there is no escaping what's at the end of the line. I always dreamed that one day Hazel would go into remission. No mother should ever have to bury her daughter. That is exactly what I am doing today. I will go, and I will look into the face that was so recently sparkling with hopes and dreams and life. I thought I had come to terms with my daughter's illness, like in books and movies and TV shows, when you finally accept the fact that the wait can never be escaped. But in reality; you can never come to terms with it, because as a mom, all you can remember is your baby girl, and you can't accept it because accepting it is like giving up.

I can barely accept it now, even when I know that she has reached the end of the line. I know that one day, I will forget some things about Hazel Grace Lancaster. I know that one day I will forget the exact angle of her smile, the precise shade of brow n her eyes are. Were- that's death, changing what was to what used to be.

"Grace…" David speaks to me quietly, and his eyes shine with tears for the lost. I grasp my husband tightly, and we both release our sorrows, drowning in tears and misery and disbelief.

I love you, Hazel Grace. And wherever you are now, my love follows you there, even when my body cannot.