Umbilical cord

Sana Was My Umbilical Cord I came across this image of an umbilical cord and stopped. The words beneath it said: one cord. Two lives connected For nine months, it carries oxygen, nutrients, and everything a baby needs. And then, at birth, the cord is cut. The first separation. The first breath. And I thought of Sana. Sana was my umbilical cord. Not literally, of course. But in every way that matters to a mother, she was the invisible cord that connected me to another life. From the moment she came into my world, something in me became permanently connected to her. I could be across the room and somehow know when she needed me. I could hear something in her voice and sense that something wasn't right. Her happiness became my happiness. Her pain found its way into my body. That is what motherhood does. The physical cord is cut, but the emotional one never really is. We spend years teaching our children to separate from us. First they learn to crawl away. Then they walk. Then they go to school. They make friends, build lives, leave home. We tell ourselves that this is what we are supposed to do—raise them to become independent. But somewhere along the way, the cord changes. It becomes invisible. And you don't realize how strong it is until it is suddenly pulled taut. When Sana became ill, every development felt like something happening inside my own body. Every phone call, every update, every new complication felt like another tug on that invisible cord. I would go to work. I would carry on. I would teach. I would speak to people. I would do the ordinary things that life demanded. But inside, there was always that cord. *Is she okay?* That question lived somewhere inside me, every single day. And then came the unimaginable—the moment when the physical world could no longer hold onto her. People sometimes speak about loss as though death is the ultimate separation. But for a mother, I don't think the cord is ever truly cut. It simply changes. There is no longer a hand to hold. No voice calling your name. No room to walk into. No text message. No physical presence to reach for. But the connection remains. It lives in memories. In photographs. In dreams. In the sudden ache that arrives without warning. In a song. In a smell. In a place. In something someone says that makes you think, *Sana would have loved that.* I sometimes wonder if this is why grief can feel so physical. Because perhaps it is. For years, my body knew Sana was there. My nervous system knew her presence. My heart had learned her rhythms. I had spent a lifetime being connected to her. And then suddenly, there was silence. How do you teach a body that someone it has been connected to for so long is no longer physically here? Maybe you don't. Maybe grief is the body learning to live with an invisible cord. Sana was my umbilical cord—not because she sustained me physically, but because she became woven into the very fabric of who I am. And perhaps that is the part of motherhood no one tells you. The cord is cut at birth. But the connection isn't. Some cords simply become invisible. And some remain for a lifetime.

The Knot in my stomach

The Knot in My Stomach When someone close to you is suffering, you begin to see parallels everywhere. Experiences that might otherwise feel unrelated suddenly bring you back to places in your life you thought you had already learned to navigate. Leaving India this time was incredibly hard. My mother was not well, and almost every week I was there, there seemed to be something new—a new ailment, a new concern, another reason to worry. I found myself caught between gratitude for the time I could spend with her and the fear of what might happen when I was no longer there. And then, almost without warning, I was back in those hospital days with Sana. When Sana was in the hospital, every day seemed to bring a new development. Just when we thought we understood what was happening, something else would change. Another test. Another conversation. Another complication. Another uncertainty. I remember how I used to detach myself when I went to work. For those few hours, I had to function. I had to teach, talk, smile, and carry on as though life was ordinary. But underneath it all was the knowledge that nothing was ordinary. And then I would leave work and head home. That was when the knot in my stomach would begin. *Will everything be okay? What will I find when I get there? Will there be another phone call? Another change?* I recognize that feeling now. Every time I call my mother, there is that same knot. Before she answers, a part of me is already preparing for bad news. I listen carefully to her voice. I notice things she says—or doesn't say. I wonder what has changed since the last conversation. And suddenly, I am that same person again—the mother waiting for news from the hospital, hoping that the next phone call will bring reassurance rather than fear. Grief has a strange way of rewiring you. Once you have lived through the uncertainty of losing someone you love, another person's illness can awaken feelings you thought belonged only to the past. I know my mother is not Sana. I know this is a different journey, a different chapter, a different kind of worry. But my body remembers. My heart remembers. And sometimes, before my mind has even had time to process what is happening, that familiar knot appears. Maybe this is another part of grief no one talks about—the way loss changes how we experience future uncertainty. Once you have experienced the unimaginable, you know it is possible. You can no longer tell yourself, *It will never happen to me.* Because it did. I lost Sana. And now, when someone I love is suffering, I cannot simply assume everything will be okay. So I am learning to sit with the uncertainty. To be present with my mother. To cherish the time I have with her without allowing fear of tomorrow to steal today. But I also understand now that the mother who sat beside Sana in that hospital is still with me. She never really left. She is the part of me that listens more carefully, worries more deeply, and feels every change with an intensity I did not know was possible. And perhaps that is what grief does. It doesn't just make you miss the person you lost. It changes the way you love everyone who remains.

How Can I Be Grateful

How Can I Be Grateful Gratitude is a word I have used often throughout my life. We are taught to look for the things we have, to appreciate the people around us, and to be grateful for the blessings in our lives. But grief has made me question the word *gratitude* in a way I never expected. What does gratitude mean when you have lost a child? Should I feel grateful that I had Sana in my life? Of course I do. I am endlessly grateful for every moment, every memory, every laugh, every conversation, every little piece of her that remains with me. But am I grateful for what happened to her? No. And I don't think I should have to be. I am grateful for the love she gave us. I am grateful for the people who loved her. I am grateful that she experienced friendships that were genuine and unconditional. I am grateful for the memories that I will carry for the rest of my life. But there is no gratitude for losing her. There is no way to make that loss meaningful enough that I should somehow feel thankful for it. There are days when people talk about finding gratitude in tragedy, and I struggle with that. Because how can I be grateful when the person I would be most grateful to have beside me is no longer here? Grief has taught me that two truths can exist at the same time. I can be grateful for having had Sana and devastated that I lost her. I can appreciate the life she lived and still be angry that her life ended. I can cherish every memory and wish with every part of me that I could make another one. I can feel gratitude for my family while feeling an unbearable emptiness because one member is missing. Perhaps that is the problem with the expectation that grief should eventually lead us to gratitude. Sometimes grief doesn't need to be transformed into something beautiful. Sometimes loss is simply loss. I don't need to find a lesson in Sana's death. I don't need to be grateful for the pain. I don't need to pretend that losing my child was somehow a blessing because it changed me. It changed me, yes. But I would give anything to have been changed in another way—to have grown older with Sana, to have watched her life unfold, to have shared ordinary days that I once took for granted. So I will continue to practice gratitude, but on my own terms. I will be grateful for Sana. For her laughter. For her kindness. For her friendships. For her beautiful heart. For the years we were given. For every memory that grief cannot take away. But I will never be grateful that she died. And perhaps that is okay. Because loving Sana means loving the whole truth of her story—not trying to soften the ending so that it becomes easier for other people to understand. I lost my child. How can I be grateful for that? I can't. And I don't have to be.

When Time Moves and Life Stands Still

When Time Moves and Life Stands Still Life seems so long, yet somehow, time flies. My trip to India has ended, and I am back in Chicago, carrying a mixed bag of emotions. Some I can name; others I cannot. There is something unsettling about returning to the ordinary routines of life when a part of me still feels suspended somewhere else. Sometimes I wish I could wake up and discover that this has all been a terrible dream. That Sana is alive. That I can call her, hear her voice, tell her about my day, and share with her the little, mundane things that make up a life. And then reality returns. Sana's book, which took me two years to bring to print, is a stark and tangible reminder of her absence. The book exists. The words exist. The memories exist. But Sana is not here. I look at the book and feel the weight of that reality. It is something created from her life, something that carries her essence, yet she is not here to hold it, read it, or tell me what she thinks. Grief has a strange way of smearing the edges of reality. For me, it can feel almost like a coma—coming in and out of consciousness. I move through the ordinary rhythms of life. I travel. I come home. I make plans. I attend to responsibilities. I do all the things that life requires. And then, without warning, the truth breaks through. Sana is gone. For a moment, everything becomes unreal again. Perhaps this is what grief does. It creates a space where the boundaries between what is real and what is not become blurred. My mind knows the truth, but some deeper part of me continues to expect Sana. I search for her in familiar places, in memories, in dreams, in photographs, in the smallest fragments of everyday life. It is not that I don't understand the reality. It is that my heart has not learned how to live inside it. I have returned to Chicago, and life continues as though nothing has happened. The days come and go. There are errands, responsibilities, conversations and plans. The world keeps moving. And sometimes that feels almost cruel. How can everything remain so ordinary when my world changed so completely? The mundane routine of life can feel like a rigmarole—repeating itself without meaning, without Sana in it. I find myself wondering what life would look like if she were still here. What we would talk about. Where we would go. What she would be doing. What she would think of the life I am living now. Perhaps that is one of the most painful parts of losing someone. It isn't only the big moments that I mourn. It is the ordinary ones. The conversations that will never happen. The stories that will never be shared. The small discoveries I will never tell her about. The simple comfort of knowing that she is there. I miss having Sana as part of the ordinary. And so I continue to move between two worlds—the world in which I know she is gone and the world in which some part of me still expects her to walk through the door. Maybe that is grief. Not forgetting. Not simply accepting. But learning to exist in a reality that the heart still sometimes refuses to believe. Sana's absence has become part of my everyday life, yet her presence remains woven into it. Perhaps I will always carry this strange space between knowing and not knowing, between reality and memory, between the life I have and the life I imagined with Sana in it. And perhaps this is how I will continue to find my way through grief—not by leaving Sana behind, but by carrying her forward. One ordinary day at a time. Carrying the extraordinary absence of my daughter. Carrying her memories. Carrying her words. Carrying her love. And somehow, continuing to live. When Time Moves and Life Stands Still Life seems so long, yet somehow, time flies. My trip to India has ended, and I am back in Chicago, carrying a mixed bag of emotions. Some I can name; others I cannot. There is something unsettling about returning to the ordinary routines of life when a part of me still feels suspended somewhere else. Sometimes I wish I could wake up and discover that this has all been a terrible dream. That Sana is alive. That I can call her, hear her voice, tell her about my day, and share with her the little, mundane things that make up a life. And then reality returns. Sana's book, which took me two years to bring to print, is a stark and tangible reminder of her absence. The book exists. The words exist. The memories exist. But Sana is not here. I look at the book and feel the weight of that reality. It is something created from her life, something that carries her essence, yet she is not here to hold it, read it, or tell me what she thinks. Grief has a strange way of smearing the edges of reality. For me, it can feel almost like a coma—coming in and out of consciousness. I move through the ordinary rhythms of life. I travel. I come home. I make plans. I attend to responsibilities. I do all the things that life requires. And then, without warning, the truth breaks through. Sana is gone. For a moment, everything becomes unreal again. Perhaps this is what grief does. It creates a space where the boundaries between what is real and what is not become blurred. My mind knows the truth, but some deeper part of me continues to expect Sana. I search for her in familiar places, in memories, in dreams, in photographs, in the smallest fragments of everyday life. It is not that I don't understand the reality. It is that my heart has not learned how to live inside it.

Grief Changes You

Grief Changes You Today I came across a quote that said, *"Parents are never the same after losing a child."* I paused when I read it because it captured something I have struggled to put into words. It is true. We are never the same. People often ask if time heals grief. My experience has been different. Time doesn't erase the loss; it simply teaches you how to carry it. The person you were before your child died no longer exists. Someone new is born—a version of yourself shaped by love, loss, and survival. Over the past few years, I have become quieter. Not because I no longer care about people, but because I have distanced myself from events, expectations, and the constant noise of life. I have stopped worrying about what others think of me. This solitude has become my sacred space—a place where healing happens gently, without explanation or apology. One of the greatest lessons therapy has taught me is that grief belongs to the person living it. There is no right way to grieve, no timeline, and no finish line. My journey is mine alone, and I have learned to walk it in my own way. People still disappoint us. They misunderstand us. They say the wrong things or disappear when we need them most. Once, those hurts would have consumed me. Now they barely leave a mark. That doesn't mean they don't hurt—it is simply that no pain compares to the pain of losing Sana. When you have experienced that depth of heartbreak, so many other wounds lose their power. This trip to Mumbai has reminded me that returning home changes as we grow older. Home is no longer just familiar streets or cherished memories. It becomes hospital visits, aging parents, difficult conversations, and the quiet realization that time is moving far too quickly. Yet this visit has also filled me with gratitude. Being able to spend precious time with my mother is a gift I don't take for granted. When I see the joy in her eyes just because I have come home, I realize how deeply love connects us across generations. At the same time, I cannot help but miss Sana with every part of my being. I wish she were here to sit beside me, to laugh with me, to tease me, to make new memories in the city she loved visiting. Every beautiful moment carries the shadow of wishing she could have shared it. Sana was one of the fortunate ones. She had an extraordinary circle of friends who loved her unconditionally, just as she loved them. She was always there for the people she cared about—with kindness, loyalty, and a generosity of spirit that couldn't be taught. In a world that often feels increasingly self-centered and materialistic, those were two qualities she quietly rejected. She believed that relationships mattered more than possessions, that showing up for people mattered more than impressing them. Perhaps that is one of the greatest legacies she left behind. This journey has been an emotional roller coaster—filled with grief, gratitude, longing, and love. And maybe that is what life after loss becomes. We carry sorrow and gratitude together. We smile while our hearts ache. We learn to hold joy in one hand and grief in the other. I will never be the person I was before Sana. But every day, I try to become someone she would be proud of. That is how I continue to walk this journey—with her beside me, always.

The Lobby

The Lobby For the past three nights, I have had the same dream. I am standing outside Sinai Hospital. I push open the doors and enter the lobby. Instantly, my heart begins to sink. It is the exact feeling I carried every single time I walked into that building when Sana was in the ICU. It amazes me how the body remembers. The lobby isn't just a lobby anymore. It holds countless mornings, long afternoons, sleepless nights and silent prayers. I can almost hear the sound of the elevators opening and closing, the distant conversations at the reception desk, the footsteps echoing through the corridors. Everything feels exactly as it did. In my dream, I don't stop. I walk toward the elevators. I press the button. The doors close behind me. As the elevator climbs, so does the anxiety. Every floor brings me closer to the ICU. The doors open. And there is Sana. That is where the dream ends. When I woke up after the third night, I couldn't understand why my mind kept bringing me back to that place. Why not one of our happy memories? Why not her laughter, her smile, or one of the many ordinary moments that made life beautiful? Instead, my dream returned to the lobby, the elevator and the ICU. As I reflected on it, I began to understand that trauma has its own way of remembering. When we live through prolonged trauma, we don't just remember the event itself. We remember the journey that led us there. Our minds record the sequence—the hospital entrance, the elevator ride, the corridors, the waiting. Even the anticipation becomes part of the memory. Perhaps that is why, years later, my dreams still know the way. What struck me most was not what happened in the dream, but what didn't happen. I never spoke to Sana. She never spoke to me. The dream ended the moment I saw her. I realized that perhaps my subconscious wasn't taking me back to Sana as much as it was taking me back to the feeling that lived just before I reached her. Every day I walked into that ICU carrying the same silent question: What will I find today? Will she be stronger? Will she be weaker? Will today bring hope, or another setback? That uncertainty became part of me. It lived in every elevator ride and behind every set of ICU doors. Looking back, I think it was one of the hardest parts of loving someone who was critically ill—the constant not knowing. Lately, life has quietly awakened those feelings again. Watching my ninety-two-year-old mother disappear into dementia has brought me back into another season of anticipating loss. Looking through Sana's photo book, reflecting on grief, and even longing to celebrate my son's marriage after years of emotional survival have all stirred memories I thought had settled. Perhaps grief never truly disappears. Perhaps it simply waits for another tender moment to remind us where love once lived. People often think healing means forgetting. I no longer believe that. Healing is understanding that our hearts and our nervous systems remember differently. Love remembers birthdays, laughter and embraces. Trauma remembers elevators, corridors and the moments before a door opens. Both are expressions of love. One remembers the life that was lived. The other remembers how fiercely we fought to hold onto it. Even now, years later, I can close my eyes and find my way through the lobby of Sinai Hospital. Not because I want to relive those days. But because, at the end of that journey, my daughter was waiting for me. And I would have walked those corridors a thousand times over just to be with her.

Waiting for a celebration

Waiting for a Celebration Of late, I have been trying to understand grief—not through books or therapy alone, but through the quiet questions that keep surfacing in my own life. A few months ago, my son got married. Since then, I have found myself asking him, "When can we celebrate? Give me a date." I kept wondering why this felt so important to me. Why was I holding on to the idea of a celebration with such determination? Then I realized where it began. Almost five years ago, Sana said to me, "When the time comes, we should have a celebration in San Diego." It was one of those conversations you never imagine will become a memory you cling to. But after she died, that wish never left me. It stayed quietly tucked away, waiting. Perhaps I am not just waiting for a party. Perhaps I am waiting to honour a promise that she imagined. The truth is, since losing Sana, my emotional world has become almost linear. Grief has a way of flattening every feeling. The highs are never as high, the excitement never lasts, and happiness often feels out of reach. Life continues, but it does so in muted colours. Now, watching my 92-year-old mother slowly disappear into dementia has added another layer of sorrow. I find myself emotionally numb, as though there is only so much the heart can carry before it protects itself by feeling less. And yet, somewhere within that numbness, I find myself longing for one moment of joy. Not because it will erase the grief. Not because it will make everything okay. But because I want to remember what happiness feels like, even if only for an evening. People often think grief is about crying. Sometimes it is. But often, it is about searching for a single glimmer of light after living in the shadows for so long. That is what losing a child does. It changes your relationship with joy. You no longer expect happiness to arrive naturally. You wait for it. You hope for it. You create opportunities for it because spontaneous joy has become so rare. If we do celebrate, it won't just be about a wedding. It will be about family. It will be about love. It will be about fulfilling a dream Sana once spoke aloud. And somewhere, I know she would have been the happiest person in the room—planning every detail, making sure everyone felt included, smiling that smile that could light up an entire gathering. Perhaps that is why I keep asking for a date. Because even in her absence, she is still inviting us to celebrate life.