The After is the hardest thing Hazel has ever lived through. She has experienced wars, loss, injuries, and childbirth, but none of these things compare to living life after her children. She never imagined, not even in her worst nightmares, that she would outlive her children, the babies she carried and loved with all of her heart and soul.
In a perfect world, she and Leo would have lived long enough to meet and love their great great grandchildren before making their way to Aslan's Country together, hand in hand. She would see each of her amazing children grow into equally wonderful adults. She would spoil her grandchildren. She would rule Narnia until her dying breath to keep the responsibility from falling to Elaine for as long as she could. She would be happy and would have found the loving family she had once had with her siblings.
This is not a perfect world. She is not happy. She's not sure that she will ever be happy again. Some days, she finds herself close to it, as she finds her place amongst her brothers and sisters once more. Most days, she is inundated with grief for the pieces of her heart that she is missing.
Living life in the After is more difficult than any battle fought, treaty negotiated, or injury endured. In her dreams, she lives in the Before. She dances with her husband and tells stories to her children. She lives as she had before she stumbled through that wardrobe and back into Spare Oom. In her waking hours, she lives in the After. She buries herself in books. She fills diaries with every memory she has of her life in the Before. She doesn't even begin to try and act as the child she should be. She spends time with her siblings and has stilted conversations with her parents. She runs laps around her peers in academics and turns her nose up when the other seven year olds invite her to play with dolls.
The After sometimes makes her wish that she didn't remember the Before. The thought only lasts a moment and makes her feel immensely guilty when thoughts of her beloved children and husband immediately follow it.
She sends hourly prayers to Aslan. She hopes that Hazel Pevensie will one day die a second death so that High Queen Hazel the Wise will live again.
She longs to have the title of 'mother' back.