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.