When the Mind Protects the Heart: A Year After Palliative Care

When the Mind Protects the Heart: A Year After Palliative Care I had seen it in movies—this moment when doctors gently tell the family, “There’s not much more we can do.” It’s a phrase so often dramatized that it almost loses meaning. But last year around this time, those words became real. Too real. The doctors said them about Sana. The cancer had spread aggressively. Despite all the effort, all the treatment, her body was no longer responding. And so they said it—calmly, clinically: it was time for palliative care. At that moment, the concept felt foreign. It was something other people went through—something tragic and distant. Not something that could ever be spoken in the same sentence as my child. But there it was. The unthinkable unfolding before me. They moved her to palliative care. And I moved into a fog. Everything after that became blurred. I have fragments—hazy images, muffled voices, sterile walls, her soft breathing, the smell of antiseptic, the feel of her hand in mine. My body was present, but my mind detached. I think it had to. Looking back, I wonder: How did I survive that week? The answer is painfully clear—my mind hadn’t fully registered what was happening. I was functioning inside an illusion, one I now recognize as a form of protection. A quiet trick of the brain to help a mother sit beside her dying child without falling apart. But illusions fade. And now, a year later, the fog is lifting—and with it, the weight of truth is settling in. Day by day, memory returns. Not just the facts, but the feelings. The helplessness. The disbelief. The unbearable silence. People often tell me I’m strong. But I’m not. Whatever strength I had has melted away, dissolved slowly over the course of this year. At times I feel weaker now than I did then. Because now I know—truly know—what I lived through. I watched my child go, and I couldn’t stop it. I held her hand, whispered comfort, but couldn’t save her. This grief is not a wave that crashes and recedes. It’s a slow unraveling. Some days, I don’t even recognize the person I’ve become. And yet, I write this not because I have answers or wisdom. I write it because I need to say it out loud: This happened. It was real. She was here. She mattered. She still matters. If you’ve been through something similar, maybe you understand. And if you haven’t, maybe one day these words will help you sit beside someone who has.