For Sana: Another Year Without You

For Sana: Another Year Without You As the year comes to an end, we are encouraged—almost compelled—to say goodbye to it. To welcome the next year with hope, resolutions, and grand expectations. A new year. A fresh start. A quiet promise that something will be different. But for me, it is simply another year without you, Sana. I don’t know what I am supposed to welcome. I don’t know what I am meant to feel grateful for. The calendar turns, but my grief does not follow its rules. Time moves forward, yet my heart remains tethered to the moment you left. I am writing this from a hospital again. My mother is in the ICU. The steady beeps of the monitor fill the room, each sound familiar, each one pulling me back in time. Her creatinine levels are rising, and with them, memories I did not ask to revisit. My body remembers before my mind can reason. Trauma does that—it collapses time. This space feels too known. The smells, the sounds, the waiting. I am once again a mother who has lost a child and a daughter terrified of losing her own. The roles blur. The fear settles in my chest. People speak of gratitude at year’s end. Of lessons learned. Of strength gained. I don’t know if I have words for that yet. What I have instead is pain—raw and unfiltered—and a quiet endurance that I did not choose but have learned to live with. Sana, another year has passed without your laughter, your presence, your winter joy. Another year of carrying your absence into every new beginning I am told to celebrate. If there is anything I can offer this ending year, it is honesty. I am still here. Still breathing. Still loving you fiercely. And some days, that has to be enough. The new year will arrive whether I am ready or not. I will step into it carrying you, as I always do—not with resolutions or promises, but with love that refuses to be measured by time. Always.