Echoes of compassion

Echoes of Compassion: Walking with Mary, Remembering Sana Some days, the heartstrings are pulled so tightly it’s hard to breathe. Today is one of those days. Mary, the young girl from Karachi I’ve been trying to support from afar, has now been hospitalized. Her condition is fragile—her mind tangled in delusions and psychosis, and her liver levels dangerously high. It’s frightening. And heartbreakingly familiar. This time last year, it was Sana. Our sweet, brave Sana, whose body had begun to fail her even as her spirit fought to stay. Among all the symptoms, it was her liver numbers that kept alarming the doctors. I remember how calm she remained despite the constant medical poking and prodding. My girl, who was once terrified of needles—who once made our family doctor in Singapore chase her down the hallway for a vaccine—somehow learned to lie still and accept the pain with grace. I recall a vivid moment from those days: she was being moved to the ICU as her heart rate grew unsteady. I was beside her, and for the first time, she whispered, “Mom, can you stay?” Of course I would stay. I wasn’t going anywhere. I got special permission to follow her all the way until the doors of the ICU. It was past midnight, and even then, through her pain and fear, she kept apologizing. “Sorry, Mom,” she said again and again. She insisted I take an Uber home. “I have the app on my phone—please use it,” she urged, worried more about me than herself. Sana was full of empathy, even as her body was failing. She was gentle, resilient, and so incredibly brave. And now, here I am, a year later, standing beside another young woman—Mary—who is not my child, but whose pain echoes the past. Her mother described how Mary refused to be admitted, ran from the ultrasound room, resisted every step of care. And all I could think of was Sana—how she had surrendered to treatment not out of defeat, but to spare us, her parents, from further burden. Grief does strange things. It breaks you, yes, but it also opens your heart in ways you never imagined. Somehow, helping Mary gives my own aching heart a purpose. I feel her pain deeply, not just because of what she’s going through now, but because I’ve seen this storm before. I’ve lived through it. And in some inexplicable way, I feel Sana beside me when I reach out to Mary. I feel her whispering, “Help her, Mom. Be there for her like you were for me.” This journey with Mary is not about replacing or recreating. It’s about honoring. It’s about love that has nowhere to go but outward. It's about a mother’s heart that continues to beat for more than just the child she lost. Because sometimes, the best way to remember love is to keep sharing it. “Grief is love with nowhere to go,” they say. But maybe, just maybe, it finds its way through compassion—one person at a time.