The Photographs That Hold a Life

The Photographs That Hold a Life It’s Sana’s birthday week, and this photograph feels especially precious. When it was taken, it was simply an ordinary evening. The three of us standing together, smiling, surrounded by city lights. Nothing about that moment told us that one day this photograph would become something I would look at differently—with a mixture of love, gratitude and longing. That is the strange thing about grief. We never know which ordinary moments will become sacred. Looking at Sana in this photograph, I find myself noticing all the little things—the way she is standing, her smile, the ease in her face. I wish I could step back into that evening for just a few minutes. Hear what we were talking about. Remember what made us laugh. Feel the comfort of knowing there would be more evenings like this. There is a painful question grief keeps bringing with it: How can someone be so present in a photograph and yet no longer be here?** But this birthday week, I don't want to remember only the ending of Sana's life. I want to remember the middle—the dinners, the laughter, the conversations, the books, the travels, the people she loved, and the kindness she carried with her. Her 28 years were far too short, but they were full of meaning, relationships and on love. Recently, Maahir wrote a beautiful note about how grateful he was that he had us living close to him. I responded, “Sana is the happiest knowing we are together.” And I truly believe that. She loved her family. She loved seeing the people she cared about together. I can imagine her looking at us now and being happy that, despite everything, we continue to show up for one another. Perhaps that is one of the things Sana left behind for us—the reminder that **being together is never ordinary. Take the photograph. Stay a little longer. Laugh a little louder. Tell the people you love that you love them. Because one day, the ordinary moment may become the photograph you return to when you need to feel close to someone you can no longer touch. This week, I will celebrate Sana by remembering not only what we lost, but everything she gave us. Her birthday week will always be about her life, her love, and the beautiful traces she continues to leave in ours.

Dystopia

Living in the Uncertainty How hard is it to understand that you can be here one day and gone the next? I think about this more than I ever imagined I would. Life sometimes feels like being on a ride that we willingly climb onto, laughing, planning, making promises, believing we know what the next turn will look like. We settle into the rhythm of our lives, convinced there will be another day, another birthday, another conversation, another hug. And then, suddenly, the ride can change. There is no warning. No sign telling us when the ride will slow down or when it might crash. We simply don't know how long we have. Since losing Sana, I think I experience the world differently. What once seemed like ordinary routines can sometimes feel strangely fragile. A goodbye doesn't always feel like just a goodbye. A hug can carry a weight it never carried before. A simple "I'll see you tomorrow" can feel like something we should never take for granted. Sometimes I feel as though I am living in a dystopia—not because the world has suddenly become unrecognizable, but because my understanding of it has changed. I have seen how quickly an ordinary life can become a before and after. Perhaps that is one of the hardest lessons grief teaches us: **we are not promised the length of the journey.** We are only given the ride. And maybe the answer isn't to live in fear of the crash. Maybe it is to become more present while we are still on the ride—to love more openly, hold people a little longer, say the things we keep postponing, and notice the ordinary moments that we once assumed would always be there. Sana's life was far too short. But she lived with a generosity of spirit that reminds me that the measure of a life isn't always its length. Sometimes it is the love we leave behind. And perhaps that is what I am still learning: how to live in a world where I know the ride can end without warning—and still find the courage to get back on it.

What Grief Has Taught Me About Seeing Pain

What Grief Has Taught Me About Seeing Pain Sana was my inspiration. I said those words in therapy today, and somehow they carried more weight than they ever have before. We talked about something I have noticed about myself since Sana died: I seem to be drawn toward people who are hurting. Young people struggling with their mental health. Families who have experienced a loss. People who seem to be carrying something beneath the surface that others may not see. And I find myself wanting to help. I wondered aloud whether grief has changed the way I see people. Before Sana, perhaps I noticed pain differently. I could empathize with it, but I had not lived inside the kind of loss that changes the landscape of your entire life. Now, I recognize things. I recognize the hesitation in someone's voice when they are trying to hold themselves together. I recognize the exhaustion behind a smile. I recognize the way grief can make ordinary days feel impossibly heavy. I recognize that sometimes people don't need answers. They simply need someone who is willing to sit beside them in the difficult place. But then another thought came to me—one that was harder to admit. I sometimes wonder whether, when I help these young people, I am also trying to validate the time I could not spend with Sana. Could helping someone else somehow make up for the moments I wish I had been there for her? Could loving and supporting others be a way of continuing to love her? And perhaps there is a little guilt hidden inside that question. The truth is, I will never be able to go back and change the time I had with Sana. No amount of helping another person can rewrite the past. No kindness I offer today can give me one more conversation, one more hug, one more ordinary day with my daughter. But perhaps I don't need it to. Perhaps grief has simply opened my eyes. Sana taught me so much about compassion, generosity, vulnerability and the importance of seeing people as whole human beings. She cared deeply about mental health. She cared about people who felt different, people who struggled, people who needed someone to believe in them. Maybe some of what I do now is not an attempt to replace what I lost. Maybe it is a continuation of what Sana awakened in me. Grief has made me more aware of the invisible pain people carry. It has taught me that someone can be functioning, teaching, working, laughing—and still be hurting deeply. It has taught me to pause. To ask. To listen. To not assume that I know someone's story. And perhaps most importantly, it has taught me that compassion does not have to come from having all the answers. Sometimes it comes simply from saying, *I see you. I know this is hard. You don't have to carry it alone. I still don't know where the line is between helping others and trying to heal a part of myself. Maybe there doesn't have to be a line. Maybe our deepest wounds can sometimes become places from which we offer compassion to others. Sana was my inspiration in life. And in some unexpected way, she continues to be my inspiration in loss. I cannot give her more time. But I can carry forward the love she gave so freely. And perhaps that is one way a life continues to touch other lives—even after it has ended.

The Hugs We Leave Behind

The Hugs We Leave Behind I miss your hugs, Sana. And lately, I have found myself missing my mother’s touch too—the simple comfort of being held, the warmth of a hand, the feeling that for a moment, everything was okay. Sana lived to hug. She had this incredible capacity for love, and she gave it so freely. She was generous to a different level—not just with things, but with herself, her time, her kindness, her attention, and her heart. She made people feel loved. My mother was much the same. Gentle. Sweet. Giving. She carried a quiet warmth that became part of the fabric of our family. Both of them had a way of giving without keeping score. And now, with both of them gone, I find myself thinking about how fragile this journey called life really is. We spend so much of our lives planning for tomorrow, believing there will always be more time. More conversations. More hugs. More ordinary days that we assume will simply continue. But we don't know when the journey will end. What we do know is that we leave something behind. A legacy. Someone recently said something about Sana that has stayed with me: **she was able to leave a legacy behind even though she had a short life.** That is so true. Her life was not measured only by the number of years she had. It was measured by the love she gave, the people she touched, the causes she cared about, the kindness she showed, and the memories she created. Perhaps that is what a meaningful life really is. Not how long we are here, but what remains of us when we leave. A hug remembered. A kindness carried forward. A lesson someone still remembers. A person who became better because they knew us. My mother and Sana both remind me of that now. Their physical presence is gone, and I ache for the things I can no longer have—their hugs, their touch, their voices, their ordinary presence in my life. But love has a strange way of refusing to disappear. It becomes memory. It becomes legacy. It becomes the way we live. And perhaps that is how we continue to carry the people we have lost—with every act of generosity, every gentle touch, every moment of kindness, and every person we make feel loved. Life is a journey. We don't know when ours will end. But we can choose what we leave behind. Sana left love. My mother left love. And I hope that, in some small way, I can carry that legacy forward.

When Grief Opens Another Door

I think I am entering a kind of grief I never knew existed. My mom isn't doing well. She has been declining for some time now. Slowly. Quietly. There is no definite answer about how much time she has left, but somewhere deep inside me, I know her end may be near. Today my sister called and said, *You can come now, or you can come later.* The old me would have said, *I'm coming now.* There would have been no discussion. No hesitation. I would have found a flight and gone. But I am not the same person anymore. Since yesterday, I have been back in that room. The palliative care room where I watched Sana slip away. I can feel the helplessness again. The waiting. The fear. The unbearable knowledge that the person you love is leaving and there is nothing you can do to stop it. And suddenly, going to India scares me. Not India itself. Not my mother. It is what I am afraid I will have to relive. I never understood before Sana died that grief could live inside your body. That your body could remember something before your mind even has time to understand why you are afraid. EMDR helped me understand that what I went through with Sana was not only grief. There was trauma woven through it. And now, another possible goodbye has touched that wound. It feels like the PTSD is back. The anxiety. The images. The fear. The physical ache of knowing what may be waiting for me. I want to go to my mother. And yet, a part of me is terrified to go. That contradiction is difficult to explain to people who haven't experienced this kind of loss. When you have lost someone you love so profoundly, you don't necessarily respond to another loss the way you would have before. You are no longer meeting this moment as the person you were. You are meeting it as someone who has already watched the unimaginable happen. I will go if my mother needs me. Of course I will. But I am allowing myself to say something I might not have been able to say before: **I am scared.** Maahir and Serena have been so supportive. Maahir has been looking at flights, talking to the family, helping me think through everything. I am grateful that, in a moment when my mind feels overwhelmed, I don't have to figure everything out alone. Maybe this is the hardest part of grief. Not just missing the person you lost. But discovering that every new goodbye can take you back to the first one. And yet, there is one thought I keep holding onto. If my mother is nearing the end of her life, perhaps Sana will be there. Perhaps my daughter will finally get to reunite with her Nani. And somehow, that thought brings a tiny thread of comfort into something that otherwise feels unbearable. I don't know what happens after we leave this life. I don't know if there really is a place where those we love are waiting for us. But tonight, I need to believe there is. I need to believe that if my mother takes that journey, she won't be alone. Because maybe my Sana will be there. Waiting for her Nani. And maybe, for once, the goodbye will not be forever.

The Ways Her Presence Finds Me

The Ways Her Presence Finds Me They say that when you lose a child, there are many ways their presence continues to find you. I think I am beginning to understand what that means. Today, a friend’s daughter-in-law came over. Her name was Sana, and there was so much about her that reminded me of my Sanu. She was gentle and soft, with a warmth that felt strangely familiar. And then I discovered that she confused her left and right—just like my Sana did. It may seem like such a small coincidence, but it stopped me. Sana always had her own strategy for figuring out which was which. She would look at her hands and remember that the hand with which she could make an “L” with her fingers was her left. I smiled when I heard this young Sana had the same little quirk. These are the moments that make me wonder if there really are ways that those we have lost continue to surround us. Tomorrow, Sana’s friend Mishtea is coming over. She was Sana’s senior at school, and since Sana’s passing, she has done so much to honour her memory. She helped make her memorial at Singapore American School happen, arranged a plaque in Cambodia, and found a way to honour her on her birthday. And now, another unexpected connection—Mishtea has been accepted to the University of Chicago, which means she will be coming to Chicago often. There is something incredibly comforting about this. I sometimes feel as though the universe is gently surrounding me with people who are connected to Sana. People who knew her. People who loved her. People who carry stories, memories, and pieces of her that I can still hold on to. I know these connections cannot replace her. Nothing can. But they remind me that her life touched so many people, and that her presence did not simply disappear when she left this world. Sometimes it appears in a person who happens to have her name. Sometimes in a tiny mannerism that only a mother would recognize. Sometimes in an old friend who unexpectedly becomes part of my life again. Maybe these are the blessings the universe sends after loss—not to take away the pain, but to remind us that love continues to find its way back to us. And lately, I have been noticing those little blessings.

Finding Pieces of You in Them

Finding Pieces of You in Them When you lose a child, the void is immense. It isn’t just the absence of the person. It is the absence of all the ordinary things you once did together—the shopping trips, the conversations, the laughter, the little stories shared in the car or over a cup of coffee. It is the loss of a relationship that was woven into the fabric of everyday life. For me, I find myself drawn to Sana’s friends and to young people her age. Recently, I took a friend’s daughter thrifting. On the surface, it was simply a mother-like afternoon—looking through clothes, talking, laughing, sharing opinions about what to buy and what definitely should be left behind. But somewhere in the middle of it, my mind went to Sana. I used to go shopping with her. I remember those conversations, the little details she would share, the stories about her life, her friends, her hopes, her frustrations. I miss knowing what was happening in her world. And now, when I spend time with young people her age and they begin telling me about their lives, something inside me feels strangely familiar. When they share something personal with me, I listen—not just as a friend’s mother or an older adult, but with the tenderness of someone who deeply misses having a daughter to listen to. For a moment, I feel close to the life I would have been living with Sana. Maybe that is part of how I am learning to carry her absence. I cannot recreate the life we had. I cannot go shopping with her again or hear her tell me about her day. But sometimes, in these unexpected moments with the young people she would have grown alongside, I catch a glimpse of the closeness I miss so terribly. I don't think I am trying to replace Sana. I think I am simply finding little pathways back to her. And perhaps that is what grief does. It teaches you to recognize the person you lost in the most unexpected places—in a conversation, a laugh, a shopping trip, a story someone chooses to share with you. For a few moments, I feel that familiar closeness again. And in those moments, I quietly think of you, Sana. You are still so deeply woven into my everyday life.