When Time Moves and Life Stands Still

When Time Moves and Life Stands Still Life seems so long, yet somehow, time flies. My trip to India has ended, and I am back in Chicago, carrying a mixed bag of emotions. Some I can name; others I cannot. There is something unsettling about returning to the ordinary routines of life when a part of me still feels suspended somewhere else. Sometimes I wish I could wake up and discover that this has all been a terrible dream. That Sana is alive. That I can call her, hear her voice, tell her about my day, and share with her the little, mundane things that make up a life. And then reality returns. Sana's book, which took me two years to bring to print, is a stark and tangible reminder of her absence. The book exists. The words exist. The memories exist. But Sana is not here. I look at the book and feel the weight of that reality. It is something created from her life, something that carries her essence, yet she is not here to hold it, read it, or tell me what she thinks. Grief has a strange way of smearing the edges of reality. For me, it can feel almost like a coma—coming in and out of consciousness. I move through the ordinary rhythms of life. I travel. I come home. I make plans. I attend to responsibilities. I do all the things that life requires. And then, without warning, the truth breaks through. Sana is gone. For a moment, everything becomes unreal again. Perhaps this is what grief does. It creates a space where the boundaries between what is real and what is not become blurred. My mind knows the truth, but some deeper part of me continues to expect Sana. I search for her in familiar places, in memories, in dreams, in photographs, in the smallest fragments of everyday life. It is not that I don't understand the reality. It is that my heart has not learned how to live inside it. I have returned to Chicago, and life continues as though nothing has happened. The days come and go. There are errands, responsibilities, conversations and plans. The world keeps moving. And sometimes that feels almost cruel. How can everything remain so ordinary when my world changed so completely? The mundane routine of life can feel like a rigmarole—repeating itself without meaning, without Sana in it. I find myself wondering what life would look like if she were still here. What we would talk about. Where we would go. What she would be doing. What she would think of the life I am living now. Perhaps that is one of the most painful parts of losing someone. It isn't only the big moments that I mourn. It is the ordinary ones. The conversations that will never happen. The stories that will never be shared. The small discoveries I will never tell her about. The simple comfort of knowing that she is there. I miss having Sana as part of the ordinary. And so I continue to move between two worlds—the world in which I know she is gone and the world in which some part of me still expects her to walk through the door. Maybe that is grief. Not forgetting. Not simply accepting. But learning to exist in a reality that the heart still sometimes refuses to believe. Sana's absence has become part of my everyday life, yet her presence remains woven into it. Perhaps I will always carry this strange space between knowing and not knowing, between reality and memory, between the life I have and the life I imagined with Sana in it. And perhaps this is how I will continue to find my way through grief—not by leaving Sana behind, but by carrying her forward. One ordinary day at a time. Carrying the extraordinary absence of my daughter. Carrying her memories. Carrying her words. Carrying her love. And somehow, continuing to live. When Time Moves and Life Stands Still Life seems so long, yet somehow, time flies. My trip to India has ended, and I am back in Chicago, carrying a mixed bag of emotions. Some I can name; others I cannot. There is something unsettling about returning to the ordinary routines of life when a part of me still feels suspended somewhere else. Sometimes I wish I could wake up and discover that this has all been a terrible dream. That Sana is alive. That I can call her, hear her voice, tell her about my day, and share with her the little, mundane things that make up a life. And then reality returns. Sana's book, which took me two years to bring to print, is a stark and tangible reminder of her absence. The book exists. The words exist. The memories exist. But Sana is not here. I look at the book and feel the weight of that reality. It is something created from her life, something that carries her essence, yet she is not here to hold it, read it, or tell me what she thinks. Grief has a strange way of smearing the edges of reality. For me, it can feel almost like a coma—coming in and out of consciousness. I move through the ordinary rhythms of life. I travel. I come home. I make plans. I attend to responsibilities. I do all the things that life requires. And then, without warning, the truth breaks through. Sana is gone. For a moment, everything becomes unreal again. Perhaps this is what grief does. It creates a space where the boundaries between what is real and what is not become blurred. My mind knows the truth, but some deeper part of me continues to expect Sana. I search for her in familiar places, in memories, in dreams, in photographs, in the smallest fragments of everyday life. It is not that I don't understand the reality. It is that my heart has not learned how to live inside it.