When Grief Opens Another Door

I think I am entering a kind of grief I never knew existed. My mom isn't doing well. She has been declining for some time now. Slowly. Quietly. There is no definite answer about how much time she has left, but somewhere deep inside me, I know her end may be near. Today my sister called and said, *You can come now, or you can come later.* The old me would have said, *I'm coming now.* There would have been no discussion. No hesitation. I would have found a flight and gone. But I am not the same person anymore. Since yesterday, I have been back in that room. The palliative care room where I watched Sana slip away. I can feel the helplessness again. The waiting. The fear. The unbearable knowledge that the person you love is leaving and there is nothing you can do to stop it. And suddenly, going to India scares me. Not India itself. Not my mother. It is what I am afraid I will have to relive. I never understood before Sana died that grief could live inside your body. That your body could remember something before your mind even has time to understand why you are afraid. EMDR helped me understand that what I went through with Sana was not only grief. There was trauma woven through it. And now, another possible goodbye has touched that wound. It feels like the PTSD is back. The anxiety. The images. The fear. The physical ache of knowing what may be waiting for me. I want to go to my mother. And yet, a part of me is terrified to go. That contradiction is difficult to explain to people who haven't experienced this kind of loss. When you have lost someone you love so profoundly, you don't necessarily respond to another loss the way you would have before. You are no longer meeting this moment as the person you were. You are meeting it as someone who has already watched the unimaginable happen. I will go if my mother needs me. Of course I will. But I am allowing myself to say something I might not have been able to say before: **I am scared.** Maahir and Serena have been so supportive. Maahir has been looking at flights, talking to the family, helping me think through everything. I am grateful that, in a moment when my mind feels overwhelmed, I don't have to figure everything out alone. Maybe this is the hardest part of grief. Not just missing the person you lost. But discovering that every new goodbye can take you back to the first one. And yet, there is one thought I keep holding onto. If my mother is nearing the end of her life, perhaps Sana will be there. Perhaps my daughter will finally get to reunite with her Nani. And somehow, that thought brings a tiny thread of comfort into something that otherwise feels unbearable. I don't know what happens after we leave this life. I don't know if there really is a place where those we love are waiting for us. But tonight, I need to believe there is. I need to believe that if my mother takes that journey, she won't be alone. Because maybe my Sana will be there. Waiting for her Nani. And maybe, for once, the goodbye will not be forever.