Portugal

Finding Sana in the People She Loved This week, we are in Portugal celebrating the wedding of Arun, one of Sana's childhood friends. The children grew up together, sharing birthdays, family gatherings, holidays, and all the ordinary moments that quietly become the foundation of lifelong friendships. As I prepared for the wedding, I knew it would be difficult. Every milestone reached by one of Sana's friends is also a reminder of the milestones she never got to experience herself. And yet, despite the ache, there was so much love. From the moment we arrived, I felt surrounded by warmth, friendship, and familiarity. There were moments when I could almost feel Sana beside me. Not in a dramatic way, but in the small, gentle ways grief sometimes allows us to feel close to those we miss. A laugh that sounded like something she would have enjoyed. A story that brought back a memory. A familiar face from her childhood. Most of all, there was Mamta. Mamta was one of Sana's favorite people in the world. Seeing her melted my heart. The moment we embraced, years of memories came flooding back. We spoke about Sana, cried for her, laughed about her, and remembered the beautiful, spirited young woman she was. There is something profoundly comforting about being with people who knew your child before grief entered your life. People who remember not just how she passed, but how she lived. People who remember her smile, her humor, her stubbornness, her dreams, and the countless moments that made her uniquely Sana. As a family, being together on the second anniversary of her passing felt strangely soothing. Not because the pain was absent, but because it was shared. Grief can feel incredibly lonely, but love has a way of gathering people together and reminding us that our memories are carried by more than one heart. At the wedding, I also met another mother who had recently lost her daughter in a devastating car accident. We found each other almost instinctively. There are conversations that only those who have lost a child can truly understand. No explanations are necessary. No attempts to fix the pain. Just an unspoken recognition of a heartbreak that changes you forever. As we shared our stories, I felt something unexpected: validation. Not validation of the pain itself, but validation that the overwhelming emotions, the flashbacks, the longing, and the endless search for meaning are part of a journey many grieving parents walk. It was a reminder that while grief feels isolating, we are not entirely alone within it. The wedding was beautiful. There were tears. There was laughter. There was celebration. And through it all, there was Sana. Not physically beside us, but woven into every conversation, every memory, every embrace, and every person who loved her. For a few precious days, surrounded by family and lifelong friends, I felt as though I carried her with me everywhere I went. And perhaps that is one of grief's greatest gifts. The people we love never truly leave the spaces they once filled. They continue to live in stories, in friendships, in traditions, and in the hearts of those who remember them. This week, in Portugal, celebrating a new beginning while honoring a profound loss, I realized that Sana's presence is not something I have to search for. She is already here. In the people she loved. And in the love they continue to share with me. ❤️

My best friend by Vaidehi

death phrases From Vaidehi my best friend died 2 years ago. i don’t usually tell people that, though. i tell them she “passed away”. i hate saying it. it sounds so greyscale. distanced. the way bureaucrats or administrators would talk about it. not in specifics. that it was a series of statistically unlikely events. that she didn’t get the chance to be happy (or even just content) and find a love interest and watch her brother get married and her parents grow old. that phrase is someone else’s language, not mine. passed away is a peculiar phrase. by the time you start saying “pass-”, there’s only one way that sentence ends. it gives the other person that fraction of a millisecond longer to process what you’ve said, understand its levity, decide how they want to respond. passed away is a very passive phrase, much more so than died or is dead. no hard, final sounds that you can’t come back from. you could imagine someone slipping into a permanent slumber. shimmering out of existence. going somewhere really far away from us, too far too see but not so far we might never find them again. passed away is the way you gloss over the details of death. fuzzing over the days of waiting around for someone to die once you take them off the intubator. misting over the image of her childhood best friend, now a doctor, sitting at her bedside for those final twelve hours, monitoring her for any sign of discomfort to administer more pain meds. eliding over the fact that he was the one to declare her dead. passed away is in the past tense. death was something that happened, that single moment of the final breath or heart beat. it doesn’t tell anyone about how your heart is still broken. it doesn’t convey the guilt you feel that you don’t feel sad about it every single day. that somehow, she isn’t the first thing on your mind and hasn’t been for some time. it doesn’t explain how could you just move on, how could you be okay when she’ll never– passed away gives you time to think about how you want to share the news. why you’re sharing it. it gives you the distance you need from the most horrible days, weeks, months of your life. it alienates you from the things you’re saying the same way her death alienated you from everyone because that’s what grief and loss are. that inescapable reminder that you are alone. it stops you from reliving it over again, all the feelings that you felt. the anxiety of not knowing, the existential dread of knowing. it makes it less likely that you remember watching the life literally drain out of her. my best friend passed away two years ago. i miss her.

Time heals?

2 years back this was the time when Sana slipped into a coma. A day before she walked the icu round twice . The next day she wanted a bath so was sponging her when she I remember had done body jerks ( which might have been a stroke. Soon after she slipped away. I can’t believe her resilience. She forced herself to walk and that to us was a hopeful sign. I just can say that those grieving, the first year your brain is in a shock and it slowly starts unraveling. This year especially this month has been hard as I get a memory of the hardest times. It almost feels like flashes of memories. Who says grief heals over time?????

Quiet cracking

Quiet Cracking: What Sana Taught Me About Hidden Pain Before losing Sana, I believed pain was visible. I thought people who were struggling would somehow show it clearly — through tears, anger, withdrawal, or words. I did not fully understand that some of the deepest emotional pain exists quietly beneath everyday life. Now I understand something I wish I never had to learn. Some people are quietly cracking inside while still smiling at the world. Sana laughed. She made plans. She spoke about the future. She loved deeply. She showed kindness and empathy to others even when carrying her own emotional weight. And yet beneath all of that, there were battles I could not fully see. As a mother, this realization stays with me every single day. I replay moments in my mind wondering whether there were signs hidden inside ordinary conversations. Whether there were emotions she could not fully express. Whether the world expects young people to appear “fine” while silently carrying unbearable pressure, anxiety, loneliness, or sadness. After losing Sana, I no longer look at people the same way. I look at students differently. I look at silence differently. I look at exhaustion, withdrawal, and even forced smiles differently. Because I now understand that functioning does not always mean someone is okay. Some people continue going to school, attending work, laughing with friends, posting online, and showing up for life while internally struggling to hold themselves together. That is what quiet cracking feels like. Grief has taught me that emotional pain is often invisible until it becomes too heavy to carry. And perhaps one of the greatest tragedies is how often society rewards people for hiding their struggles well. Today, I carry Sana not only in memory, but in awareness. Awareness that kindness matters. That listening matters. That emotional safety matters. That asking someone “Are you really okay?” can matter more than we realize. Because behind the strongest smiles, there can sometimes be the deepest pain. And because of Sana, I will never again assume that silence means someone is not hurting.

Memories

Grief, Addiction, and Two Years of Holding on to Sana’s Memories Today, the publisher in India sent Sana’s photo book for printing. A simple message. Yet it felt emotionally overwhelming, because it took me two years to create a lifetime of memories. Two years of looking through photographs, messages, videos, and pieces of a life that once filled every corner of mine. Two years of stopping and starting again because grief is not something you “complete.” It lives beside you. Some days quietly, and some days so loudly that even breathing feels exhausting. Creating Sana’s memory book made me think deeply about grief and addiction. What is addiction, really? Is it simply weakness, as society often labels it? Or is it sometimes the human mind trying desperately to survive unbearable pain? People often judge grieving individuals for how they cope without understanding what grief does to the body, mind, and soul. Addiction is not always obvious. Sometimes it is alcohol or medication. Sometimes it is endlessly scrolling through photos because you are terrified of forgetting a face, a smile, or a voice. Sometimes it is mindlessly watching Netflix to avoid silence. Sometimes it is staying in bed because the world outside feels impossible to face. Grief itself can become consuming. You hold onto memories because they are all you have left. While creating this book, there were moments I found myself unable to continue. A single photograph could unravel me for hours. There is something profoundly painful about realizing that the moments you once lived are now memories you are desperately trying to preserve before time softens their edges. How do you place someone’s entire existence into printed pages? How do you summarize love, laughter, dreams, and presence into captions beneath photographs? You cannot. And yet I tried. Because creating this book became more than a project. It became an act of resistance against forgetting. A way of holding onto Sana in the only ways still available to me. Sana was also deeply intuitive about others’ emotions and pain. She had a quiet sensitivity to people around her—often sensing what others were feeling even when they did not say a word. That intuitive understanding of others’ inner worlds feels even more present in my memory of her now. Grief has also changed the way I see others. Living with this level of pain makes you intuitively recognize suffering in people around you. I notice it in my students, in their silence, disengagement, exhaustion, or emotional withdrawal. Pain teaches you to see beyond behavior and into the hidden emotional worlds people carry. Society often tells grieving people to “be strong.” But strong for whom? Why are people expected to carry unimaginable pain quietly so others feel comfortable? It is easy to judge coping mechanisms when you have never experienced this depth of loss yourself. But grief changes the way you move through the world. Sometimes it feels like living inside a black-and-white photograph with no desire left to fill it with color again. Today the book goes to print. But grief does not end with printed pages. Neither does love.

The mirror

The month of May brings back only painful memories. Every day feels etched with memories of what Sana went through — the fear, the exhaustion, the helplessness in her eyes that no mother should ever have to witness. Sometimes it feels as though time has not moved at all. My body may exist in the present, but my heart continues to live inside those moments. Lately, I find myself experiencing so much of what Sana once described to me. The heaviness. The inability to get out of bed. The feeling that the bed becomes the only safe space in the world. Sana used to lie in bed for hours over the weekends, and I would gently tell her, “Get up, you’ll feel better.” And she would quietly say, “I can’t.” At the time, I heard her words, but I don’t think I fully understood them. I understand them now. There are days when grief settles into the body like concrete. Days when even the smallest task feels impossible. Days when simply existing feels heavier than anyone on the outside could imagine. Sana often told me her heart hurt. She spoke about a pressure in her chest that she could never fully explain. And somehow, coincidentally or not, I feel that same pressure now too. A heaviness sitting inside my chest as though grief itself has weight. And alongside the grief lives guilt. A quiet, persistent guilt that whispers I did not do enough. Maybe I should have understood sooner. Maybe I should have listened differently. Maybe I should have sat beside her longer on those days she could not get out of bed instead of believing motivation alone could heal what she was carrying inside. As a mother, you replay everything. Every conversation. Every symptom. Every moment you thought would pass. You search your memory endlessly looking for the thing you missed, the thing you could have changed, the thing that might have brought your child back to you. That guilt becomes its own kind of grief. Most days, productivity feels distant. Life continues around me, but I move through it slowly, almost disconnected from it. It is as if the universe is making me walk through the same emotions Sana once carried so silently within herself. And that realization breaks me. Because if I could choose, I would take every ounce of this pain, every sleepless night, every heavy morning, every ache in my chest — if it meant giving Sana her life back. I would endure all of it willingly. There is something profoundly heartbreaking about understanding your child’s pain more deeply only after they are gone. About replaying conversations and finally realizing the depth behind words you once thought were temporary sadness, exhaustion, or stress. Grief changes the way you understand people. It changes the way you understand suffering. And it changes the way you understand love. Because love does not end when someone leaves this world. If anything, it expands into every corner of your existence. It lives in memories, in silence, in aching, in longing, and in the unbearable wish for one more moment. May will probably always hurt. It will always carry the memories of hospital rooms, whispered prayers, fear, hope, and heartbreak. But above all, it will always carry Sana.

Mothers day

Mother’s Day feels impossible this year. Maybe because there is no version of this day that exists without Sana. Two years ago, around this same time, she was in the hospital. We were still holding onto hope, still speaking in the language of “when you get better.” I remember joking with her, telling her that once she recovered, we would all go out for brunch together for Mother’s Day. She looked at me and said, “Sure, Mom.” I teased her about my gift too, and she smiled and said that would come once she felt better. At the time, those words felt ordinary. Simple. Temporary. We truly believed there would be another Mother’s Day. Another brunch. Another laugh. Another chance. Now May arrives carrying memories instead of plans. People speak about celebrating Mother’s Day, but grief changes the meaning of celebration. I don’t want distractions from Sana this month. I don’t want to move away from the memories to make the day lighter or easier. The memories are painful, but they are also all I have left of those moments with her. Sometimes grief makes you hold tightly even to the pain, because the pain itself is connected to love. There is an incompleteness that sits quietly inside me now. A motherhood that still exists, but with an absence so profound that every celebration feels fractured. I am still Sana’s mother. That will never change. But Mother’s Day without her feels less like a celebration and more like standing beside a life that was interrupted too soon. And maybe this year, surviving the day is enough. Maybe loving her, remembering her voice, replaying those small conversations in my mind, is the only way I know how to honor Mother’s Day now.