Love, when given room, wants to keep growing. And Luna is love. She’s like pure vanilla, love. When I meditate, I feel her changing. I don’t know if it is maturity, wisdom, or the deepening of her soul, but she feels different to me than she did in the beginning.

When she first died, she bombarded me. She was loud, insistent, almost impatient. Unwilling to let me forget that she was still there. I could hear her voice so clearly.

“Mama.”

She had opinions. Wants. Thoughts. Feelings. She would direct me the way she always had, with that certainty she carried in her little body. And I would ask her questions. So many questions. Am I making the right choice? What will happen to us? What do I do about this person? What about the people who hurt me? Should I stay angry? Should I forgive them? She would skip right over most of it. Almost as if those questions were too small to bother with.

Like a child, but also like Luna, but also somehow like a great teacher who had suddenly gained access to a much larger view. She was not interested in the small fries. She kept returning me to the same things. Love, forgiveness, presence, peace.

And every night, I dreamt of her. I would find her the way you find a child you thought had wandered away for only a moment. There you are. She would be running naked through the yard, laughing. I would open my closet and she would be hanging upside down. Or lying in a field. I would be startled every time. Oh. There you are. You were right in front of me all along. And she would smile back at me as if to say, obviously, “I have been waiting.”

Now she comes differently and carefully and less often. I sometimes think she knows when to step back. She leaves space for Penelope, for Koa, for Shaughn and for me. When she comes now, it feels intentional. The messages are clearer. She shows me things on her terms, but somehow honors mine too.

I had a dream recently that we were in a Halloween store together. She was sitting in the shopping cart, grinning from ear to ear. Fall was always our favorite season. The anticipation of Christmas, the start of the stream of holidays.  We lived for decorating the house, going to HomeGoods, We loved fall together.

In the dream, I looked at her and immediately started panicking. Should I take you to the hospital? Do you still have cancer? Are you sick? How long do I get to have you? How much time do we have? She just looked at me. That look. “Mama, look where we are.” We are Halloween shopping.

I could feel what she was telling me without her saying it. Just stay here. Be here. Enjoy what is in front of you. So I stopped asking. Okay, I thought. I am just going to enjoy you.

And she smiled. “Yes.” I kept pushing the cart down the aisle so excited to spend a fall with her in tow.

Then I woke up. For a few seconds, I lay there feeling like I had been given a secret night with her. Her sitting there like I had chosen her from all the children in the world. Which I did. Which I still do. Every day. Now, when I beg for her, I often see that same smile. Almost amused with me. As if she is reminding me that my life is still happening. There are other things I am supposed to enjoy. Koa cries and pulls me back into the room. Penelope needs something, someone texts, a client is waiting, dinner needs to be made.

You can’t meditate all day, Mama. And somewhere inside myself, I answer her. But my heart is with you always. “I know,” she says.

She seems to respect the rhythm of my days now. She honors the need to make space for the living. And still, my tether to her is unbreakable. My love for her is so consuming that sometimes I worry about the shadow it casts. Over Penelope and Koa definately. But also over me.

She is my firstborn. My favorite person. And now, my favorite person on the other side. Sometimes I wonder if we made an agreement before this life began. I imagine her sitting across from me somewhere before bodies, before time, before either of us knew exactly how hard this would be.

Maybe she said:

I will come as your daughter. I will teach you about love. I will show you what it means to open and to break, to change and to hurt, to feel despair and anguish, to question everything and recreate yourself from the pieces. I will shine a light into every corner of your life so that you can see yourself clearly. I will help you find freedom because I love you.

And maybe I answered:

Yes. Let’s do this together. Let’s sign up for this life.

I know how strange that might sound. This life? This one? Maybe I want to make it make sense. Something that I will never understand. But some days it is the only idea large enough to hold what happened. Because I can feel her growing now.

When I meditate and try to hold her, she feels farther away and somehow more everywhere. Less singular. Less like a little girl standing in one place. More like something spread through everything. There a bit of her in Penelope and some in Koa, some in our tree, some with her dog, some burst like rays of sun onto life creating a new language for me to learn and for me to find her by. She is learning lessons without my permission now. Without my guidance. Without me packing the snacks or reminding her to bring a sweatshirt or asking if she brushed her teeth.

And I think she likes the freedom. Still, she feels tender and full of forgiveness. Just as she was here. Just as she is there.

She reminds me to soften. To listen when something feels wrong and to forgive when I can. She tells me to give people a break and to let people go.

Maybe this is what people mean when they say love evolves after death. Not that grief ends or that loss gets smaller. But that the relationship changes shape. The screaming changes, it gets less. The desperation softens around the edges. The urge to follow her fades. And eventually there is room again. Room for life to rise alongside loss. Room for a new baby and for Penelope to grow taller. Space for Shaughn and I to share laughter that does not immediately feel like betrayal.

But still. I need you, Lu. I will always save you a seat. I will always remember the softness of your cheeks. The brush of the little hairs on your legs against mine when we sat close together. The smell of the crown of your head. Your warm weight beside me. Your humanness. I am terrified of losing those details. So I keep them. Like a little vault inside my heart where I store the things I refuse to let time take from me. But I use it like a prism and shine your light onto others.  A little lighthouse inside me. Your light moving through my heart and, if I am lucky, reaching someone else in the middle of their own storm.

Use me, I tell her. Use me to help people. Use what happened to us and what you taught me. Life cannot go on without you because you are mixed into everything now. There is no version of me without you.

There is no version of our family without you. You are in the way we parent.The way we celebrate and worry. You have taught us to forgive. You are the way Penelope loves her brother. The way I hold Koa longer than I need to. The way I understand suffering when someone sits across from me and tells me theirs. You are in everything we ever loved. Everything we ever created. I love you now more than ever, which I did not know was possible.

Sometimes my longing feels like chasing a dream that disappears the moment I wake. I reach for it and I try to pull it back. Reconstruct the missing pieces. Her face was here and her hand was here. She said something. What did she say? And then, every once in a while, the whole thing crashes over me vividly. Oh yes that was the dream. That was my life. You were real. You were here.

I return again to the possibility of that agreement. The idea that maybe we chose one another before I understood what choosing you would require. That you came to teach me love in its fiercest form and loss in its most devastating.

That you came to transform me. Maybe that was the vow all along. To break me open and tether me to you forever. Even though my humanness hurts. Even though my arms ache for the weight of you. Even though there are days I would trade every lesson, every transformation, every piece of wisdom just to hear your feet running down the hallway again.

I feel your wings soaring and your spirit stretching and growing. And here I am, still your mother. Wanting to believe you are free. And also wanting to reach into whatever world holds you and pull you back into my arms.

Maybe this is the deepest truth of motherhood. We spend our lives loving our children toward their becoming. We teach them to walk away from us, to grow, to change, to belong to themselves. And then we stand there with our arms open, aching from the distance, loving them anyway.

Love, when given room, wants to keep growing. I used to think that meant growing together. Now I know it can also mean learning how to love across an impossible distance. How to let the relationship change without believing it has ended. How to let my daughter become something I cannot fully understand while remaining completely, eternally mine.

Luna is still love. Pure like vanilla, love.

Only now she is everywhere. Not just in her bottle.

It was painted the kind of white that felt clean, certain.
 The wooden shutters were always closed, keeping the attention on the outside, never too messy, never revealing too much.
 The lawn was cut in even lines every Sunday morning, the scent of fresh summer grass rising like proof of responsibility. Timed sprinklers, like clockwork. Like everyone else.

There were wreaths on the door in every season, matching doormats too.

Inside, everything was also white, subtle, diluted, passing.

The couch looked untouched in that careful way that suggests no one really uses it to relax.
 The floors gleamed, fake laminate wood, durable, made to look like something older, richer, more real than it was.
 There were blankets folded but never rumpled.
Candles placed, but rarely burned.

It was a good house.
 A right house.
 A house that knew how to be admired from a distance.
 A house waiting to be lived in, the promise of someday held between the halls.

And inside that house, there was a woman.

She belonged to the house in a quiet, unquestioned way.
 Not as its owner, but as its keeper.

She tended to it with devotion.
 Adjusted what shifted. 
Smoothed what wrinkled.
Maintained what must never fall apart.

She was mostly asleep. She started to dream more than she was lucid.

She slept through her alarms, through mornings that reached for her. The day filled itself without her, like a house staged for living but never truly inhabited.

She knew how to disappear just enough to keep everything working.

Because dreaming and disappearing can sometimes look the same.
 Her eyes stayed closed.

And then, there was a fire.

The fire blazed under the waning moon, her light steady as the ashes grew.

The flames moved fast.
 They took the couch, the blankets, the floors.
 They curled around the wreath on the door, swallowed the mailbox with its hopeful flag still raised.

The shutters, those careful, closed eyes,
 splintered open under heat.

Everything that had been arranged, managed, controlled
was now burning.

It was a big fire.
 The kind that pulled people from their homes,
 standing in the street in borrowed curiosity,
 watching something collapse that had once looked so certain.

They wondered what caused it.


They always do.

Some said a gas line left open.
 Some blamed the heat, the pressure building quietly over time.
 Some said what a shame it was such a nice house.

It continued to burn.

And when it was over, 
everything was ash.

The house was gone.


Nothing was left.

Except the woman.

Marred. 
Silent.
 Eyes wide open.

She could no longer stay asleep, ignore, or turn away.

The roles the house held for her, gone.
 The quiet agreements she had made with herself to stay small, to stay good, to stay needed, gone.

She stood there, uncontained now.
 Free falling while standing still,
the constraints of the house stripped away.

The air felt different.
 Too open. Too honest.

And then, almost without thinking,
she reached into her pocket.

She pulled it out slowly, a photograph,
grateful for proof that something had existed,
that something had survived, if only in memory.

A woman stared back at her.

She recognized her immediately.

And not at all.

She traced the edges of the image with her thumb,
 taking in how untouched it was,
how easily it belonged to a world that no longer existed.

An ache rose up, deep and disorienting.

She missed her.
 Missed the ease of her, her oblivion, her naive smile.
 Missed the way she could move through life without questioning the cost.

For a moment,
 for many moments,
she wanted to go back.

Back into the bed.
 Back to sleep.
 Back into the house.
 Back before the fire,
the one that split time in two, before and after.

Before she understood how fragile everything was.
 Before she knew that love was something she could lose.
 That life, as she knew it, was never guaranteed. 
That nothing really is.

Before she had to grow up all at once,
 in a way no one can prepare you for.

She was no longer a child. 
No longer protected by the house.

Her eyes stayed on the photograph,
trying to measure the distance between who she had been
and who stood here now, how far she had traveled
in a single, unbearable blaze.

Because the fire had not just taken the house.

It had taken the architecture of her life.

The parts built on pleasing.
 On perfecting.
 On being everything for everyone,
 and nothing fully for herself.

The performance had ended.

What remained was something unfurnished.
 Uncertain. 
Unstaged.

But true.

And beneath her feet,
 the ground, darkened and broken open,
 was ready.

Not for rebuilding the same house.

But for something new.
 Something alive.
 Something true for her.

Ash makes for fertile ground.

And somewhere, inside her and all around her,
 a voice was saying:

Burn to begin.

What happens inside when people begin talking about you?
When the story grows legs.
When facts blur into inference and the old game of telephone begins again, each of us filling in the blanks.

What happens inside when the story is not only about you, but about your family, the people you love most?
When your instinct is to shield them from everything sharp and real, but you no longer have that luxury.

What happens when strangers believe they understand what it feels like to live in your body, your humanity, your room?

There are truths we wish we never had to hold.
Truths we may have tried to outrun.
Truths that burn hot and heavy, that bring us to our knees.

We all do.

And suddenly, the inside becomes the outside. Whether you are ready or not.

Private grief becomes public air.
A broken heart feels visible on the street.
A home that once felt like shelter feels transparent.

You are splayed open. There is a particular vulnerability in having no defense left. No distraction or ability to redirect attention elsewhere.

The stage appears without your consent. The light turns on.

You do not get to choose when your life becomes the headline.
You do not get to choose when your pain becomes someone else’s conversation.

Even when people care, even when they are horrified and heartbroken, there is something deeply human that leans toward the story. Toward understanding it and explaining it.

A dear friend of mine, a cancer survivor, once shared a term with me. She called it a grief vulture.

A grief vulture is someone who attaches to the story, who asks questions and gathers details in the name of concern, only to carry those details elsewhere. Not always with cruelty. Sometimes simply with curiosity. Sometimes with their own fear dressed up as interest.

There is a sticky quality to it. A circling. A sense that even when you are already on your knees, parts of your pain are being picked over and passed along.

And when you are the one living it, something inside begins to tighten. You start to wonder who is safe. Which smiles are steady. Which questions are asked with care and which are motivated by consumption.

Slowly, quietly, you learn to feel the difference in your own body. You learn who calls not to collect information but to sit with you. Who reaches out not to be in the know but to offer love.

In moments of rupture, that distinction becomes sacred.

Why? We reach for a narrative because it steadies our fear. If we can package it, maybe we can survive it and maybe we can control it. If we can assign blame, maybe we can protect ourselves. Maybe we can believe it will never happen to us.

But none of us are exempt from life.

Your tragedy could be mine.
Mine could be yours.

That recognition hums beneath the hysteria. The uncomfortable truth that we share the fragile illusion of certainty.

When something unthinkable happens, empathy can shrink under the weight of fear. We search for causes. We search for distance. We search for a way to reassure ourselves.

They must have known.
There must have been a reason.

It is easier to construct a narrative than to sit with the unbearable truth that harm can exist alongside love, that people are complex, that we do not always see what we wish we could.

I remember wanting to hold information tightly when my own world fractured. I was terrified of what it meant to be that family. The family whose child has cancer. Not because I wanted to deceive anyone, but because I was still trying to understand it inside myself. When people told me I had to share the diagnosis, had to explain it, had to make my grief legible and discuss prognosis, I was so confused.

Give me space, I wanted to say. I do not have to do anything. I cannot step outside my own body and narrate this for you. Let me understand what is happening inside me before I make it consumable.

In moments like this, when we are shaken, we are all impacted differently.

There are families whose pain is unspeakable.
There are parents whose nervous systems are on fire.
There are friends whose worlds have imploded overnight.
There are children carrying questions too heavy for their years.

And there is the wider circle of us, trying to process something that feels both close and incomprehensible.

It is natural to feel fear and anger and to want answers.

But perhaps the deeper invitation is this:
Can we speak with care?
Can we allow truth to unfold without adding volume to the noise?

Compassion does not mean minimizing harm. It does not mean avoiding accountability. It means remembering that behind every headline are children who need comfort, families who need privacy, and hearts that are shattered in ways we cannot see from the outside.

We do not have to solve this in the parking lot.
We do not have to dissect it at pickup.

Sometimes love looks like restraint.
Sometimes empathy looks like silence.

The most powerful thing we can do may be to protect the dignity of everyone involved while trusting that what needs to unfold will unfold.

Let people find their humanity in private before demanding it in public.
Let grief be quiet.
Let healing not become another spectacle.

And let us remember how fragile this all is.
This whole, tender, complicated being human thing we call life.

Let this be
another day you looked inward
and found a flame
still burning.

The voice that held you back
was loud
but not final.
It’s early still.

You have named
the weight,
given shape to silence,
and dared to imagine
kindness in its place.

If your hand trembled
or your heart cracked,
know the art you made
is more than color and form.
It’s a map,
a prayer,
a permission.

Leaving here
not with answers
but with space.
Not with perfection
but with compassion
to begin again
and again.

Every second I spent with you,

every single second,

I knew you were an angel walking this earth. I felt so lucky to call you my daughter. So proud of your wit and kindness and intelligence.

I used to joke that all roads led back to you.

And in so many ways, they did.

I did not consciously know our time would be finite, but some part of me must have, because I squeezed every drop of life out of the time we had. Every single drop.

We had the most fun.

We sang the most songs.

We danced and danced and ate good food.

We loved each other.

We laughed until we bent over.

You and your sister, the way you two were in sync, so kind, so funny, so attuned. Sometimes I wonder if she will ever feel that kind of soul-level play again with Koa. It was such a specific magic, the two of you.

I can still taste those moments. They are that close, like they never truly stopped. And if you ask Penelope, they haven’t. Just last week she was complaining about how you have not cleaned your makeup brushes and that I need to tell you, next time I dream of you, that she will clean them for you this time, but you need to be more organized. She talks about you like you are here, because you are.

Your dad, your sister, and I bring you with us everywhere.

We carry your light in everything we do.

We live in a strange in-between, one foot in this world and one foot in the world where you now are. Sometimes it feels like the three of us exist on a different plane than the rest of the living world. We experience life with an added dimension. We are constantly translating between realms, pulling invisible threads to hold our family together.

I feel you here.

And I feel you gone.

At the very same time.

There is a part of me that refuses to let you down, that refuses to close my heart or give way to despair. A part of me that will not stop living in the full, present, wonder-filled way you showed me.

Because it was not the big things.

It was the micro moments.

The tiny holy ordinary.

The Sunday mornings under blankets.

The long snuggles. The knowing glances.

The way we could breathe inside the same second.

I refuse to waste this life, because I love this life, we both do. And I do not know how much time I have until I see you again. But I know you would be Scorpio furious at me if I wore clothes with itchy tags, ate so so food, filled my time with people who didn’t make me laugh, forgot I was an artist, and didn’t take the time to stop and see your dad and listen to your sister and put my feet up and sit down on the couch.

You devoured books and music and art.

You inhaled joy.

You made things beautiful just by noticing them.

And I ask myself daily:

Can I keep my heart open enough to feel the wrenching pain and the wild beauty of being alive at the same time?

That is my challenge, as I celebrate you turning ten.

To hold both.

To let myself ache and bow in awe.

There will be a cake.

There will be a moon.

I am jealous of the heavens, that they get to hold you on November 8, my favorite day.

Happy birthday my baby. My baby.

And I am loving you still, loving you endlessly from this ground I cannot yet depart, because like you told me:

“They will not let you come yet.

You still have more to do.”

So until my time is done, I will keep looking at the moon.

But I will always always

be seeing you.

You are gone, and yet you are the most here thing in my life.

I love you and will keep celebrating you every day. Especially today, on your birthday.

I didn’t understand the depth of that naming until she began to walk, carrying with her the unseen weight that life gifted our family.

When heaviness pressed against my shoulders, and hers, I noticed how she received it. Effortlessly. With a quiet grace. She didn’t fight against the burdens, the fears, the traumas. She let them arrive, she felt deeply, let it settle, and then it became part of her fabric.

Watching her, I began to understand something I had never named before:

stones do not always need to be pushed away.

Sometimes, they steady us.

Sometimes they weigh on us,

A reminder of what needs to shift and what has to change.

Sometimes, they become the skeleton of who we are becoming.

They gather at our feet, rock bottom, yes, but also rock steady.

Over time, those stones shift. They weather. They soften. Moss and sand cling to their edges. Some move downstream. Some stay. None of it needs to be judged. None of it needs to be resisted.

What matters is allowing ourselves to feel their weight.

To trust that time, and movement, will transform them

and that we, too, will be transformed.

Light enters through the branches.
What is there cannot be seen,
yet the body knows.
It leans toward the movement,
hears a message without a mouth.

I listen to the wind.
It is not an answer.
It is a door that opens inward.
It is a room I enter with my eyes closed,
hands out,
touching what I cannot name
and knowing it anyway.

Sometimes I think of rainbows,
how they appear when the world is most honest,
when light tells the truth to water.
I cannot climb them,
I cannot hold them,
yet they keep arriving like a promise:
what was separate is not.

I keep small stones in my pocket.
Some are hers, some are mine,
each one warmed by a palm I love.
I turn them over and hear the quiet
say yes.

At night I crack the window.
The curtain lifts,
as if breath were passing through the house.
A song finds me on shuffle,
a memory steps from the dark,
the room changes temperature
the way a heart does when someone you love
walks in.

People ask where souls go.
I have stopped pointing outward.
I have learned a softer verb.
They go through.

Through the body that loved and was loved,
through the pinwheel that spins with no hand on it,
through the rubber duck winking in an empty field,
through the space between two branches
where light keeps choosing to enter.

I listen to the wind
and it listens back.
Its strength reminds me of my own.
Its hush is a teaching.
Keep the window open.
Let the sky move into you.
Carry what is gentle.
Set down what is done.

And when the air turns bright and thin,
when color gathers where there was only gray,
I know who is speaking.
I do not need proof.

Most of our time, we were at the hospital four or five times a week from morning until the evening. We would get home around dinner time, if we were lucky. We slept at our house but lived in the tests and therapies, blood pressure cuffs, scans, and door dashed dinners. The only familiar comfort was the hospital staff we had come to love, they had become our community and the people who stopped us between appointments to check in on us, they were our friends. But that day we sat at a real table in a room that did not beep. We ate with someone who knew us before all of this.

I tried to take Luna back to this restaurant several times that year, trying to recreate the warmth and comfort we felt there that day. Once we walked from the hospital in between appointments. The sidewalk was a quilt of cracks and raised edges, each bump thudding through her skull. After that, we drove. Getting the wheelchair in and out of the trunk felt like wrangling a stroller, only heavier with the weight of strangers’ sticky eyes. A small child with no hair. No hurry. Wobbling toward her chair. Luna did not seem to mind their glances. I pretended I did not either, a thin coat of repellent on my skin, as I sweated and quickly put together the wheelchair as witnesses seemingly were timing my performance.

Inside, the room was tight and there were stairs. I wrapped an arm around her waist and guided her to the table. She hated help. She wanted to wobble on her own, toes catching, knees pitching forward, I would hold her arm and she would throw an elbow to my ribs that meant let me go. Independence was her first language. “I am not a toddler,” she told me, certain she would steady. Her will was stronger than both of us.

One afternoon I ordered her pancakes and bacon again. Comfort on a plate, glossy with butter and a crown of whipped cream. Three fluffy pancakes, stacked like small moons. She rested her cheek on the table and looked up at me with bright blue eyes. “I don’t want it. I don’t feel well.” Sadness rose fast. Simple things were heavy now. Eating. Sitting up. Even going out had become exotic for us, too many pieces to assemble just to reach a table. Maybe our place was the hospital bed, where at least she was comfortable. But then DoorDash would arrive missing sour cream or ketchup, or the burger would come with cheese and she would push it away. “Blah,” she’d say. I started carrying a small pantry in my purse: ketchup packets, honey sticks, whatever might coax one more bite, Luna’s just-in-case kit. But if her food wasn’t just right she would say no. She was never a pretender. That was my role: turn straw to gold, tilt the glass toward half full, change the room from hopeless to hopeful long enough for her to taste something sweet.

Then a song came on. “I Believe in Miracles.”

My face lifted, I smiled at her, embarrassing her I am sure, as I started to dance. I sang and swayed in my chair while cutting her pancakes, stealing a bite in between lyrics.

“I believe in miracles,” I pointed at her.
“You sexy thing,” I raised my fork in the air.

Luna lifted her head and gathered herself. She raised her hands and gave a tiny shimmy, licking her lips.

“I believe in miracles,” she echoed, smiling, breathy but game.

I offered a forkful. She eyed it as if it were dog food, then took a heroic bite. Whipped cream smeared across her mouth. She grinned. Full smile. Laughter. Teeth. Courage. Audacity.

The energy shifted, hope arrived. We were having fun in a city that had forgotten how. Far from family. Fresh from needles. In the middle of cancer. The waitress came to check on us, paused and smiled, her shoulders loosening as if our table had changed the weather in the room.

The song faded. Luna lowered her head back on the table. I finished the pancakes. We paid. We left.

It was our last time there. We went out with a song in our throats.

I keep that morning as proof. The human spirit can turn on lights in the dark. The impossible can be met one bite at a time. Home is not a place. It is a moment when love sits beside you and says the music is playing, let’s dance. Home is the thread between us, the quiet bond that refuses separation, the brief and brave pockets of joy inside the unthinkable. However fleeting, we savored it, right down to the last sweet mouthful.

Inside were a few more books. I peeked at the title of the first one: Someone I Love Has Cancer.

Shocked and filled with terror, I quickly slid it back into the envelope and glanced toward Luna to make sure she hadn’t seen. She was coloring. I hid the envelope the way you’d hide something forbidden, something that shouldn’t see the light of day. I tucked it between the graphic novels.

Each morning, as I tidied her room, I’d catch sight of it on the shelf and whisper a silent plea: Please, no.

It was the same feeling I had when Luna’s oncologist first introduced herself in the ICU, just in case we needed to know each other, just in case the pathology came back malignant.
“I hope we don’t see each other again,” I said to her unapologetically.

The look in her eyes told me, you will.

The books in the envelope whispered the same message. You will open my pages. You will read these words. They will become familiar. They will become necessary.

On November 23rd, I found out Luna had cancer. The words no cure sat beside another sentence “she has a chance,” the chance of being a long-term survivor. Radiation, chemotherapy, and possibly more surgery would be part of the plan to get her there. And I would have to tell her.

The next day, I lifted my chin. I understood that I needed to be more than brave. I needed to make my courage airtight so she could borrow it, adopt it as her own. She needed to believe, through my steadiness, that even when her body hurt, even when she was separated from her family, her bed, her life, it would all be worth it. She needed to see that I believed in her survival so completely that she could believe in it too.

Luna was having my dad give her a foot massage when I walked over to the envelope and opened it.

Tears welled as I sat beside her bed. I placed my hand on her leg, inhaled through my nose, and became someone new, a mother who promised to love her daughter until the end and to show her courage no matter what would happen next. The courage she would later reflect back to me, again and again. A recycled energy between us.

“You know that show Alexa and Katie, sweetie?”
“Yeah,” she said, eyes wide, her long hair in two braids.
“You know how Alexa gets this disease called cancer, and she has to go to the hospital to get rid of it?”
She nodded.
“Well… the doctors told me and Daddy that you also have cancer. It’s in your brain, but they are going to do everything they can to get rid of it. They took the cancer out with the surgery, but they need to do some other things to make sure it’s gone for good. They already have a plan.”

Across the bed, my dad’s eyes filled with tears. He pressed his lips together tightly, trying not to make a sound. I shot him a look, lifted my chin, and swallowed hard against the ache in my throat, the hollow growing in my chest. My head buzzed, dissociating, as I opened the book.

“I want to read you this,” I said softly, turning to the first page of Someone I Love Has Cancer.

It explained what a cancer cell is, why it appears in our bodies, and how doctors try to remove it: by cutting it out with surgery, burning it with radiation, or poisoning it with chemotherapy.

Luna listened carefully, her brow furrowed in concentration, always the good student. She asked questions about what would happen to her.
“What will happen to my hair?” she asked.
“It might fall out,” I said. “But it will grow back. New hair for a new beginning.”

She didn’t seem afraid. She seemed relieved to have some answers for what was happening. She seemed hopeful. She asked to read the book again.

Over the next year that envelope became a small library, each book another step in our shared language of survival.

Luna became the best student, memorizing every word she read about cancer. She rehearsed the steps of treatment like lines in a play: Radiation might cause rashes; chemotherapy can make you sick. She told anyone who asked, “They’re getting rid of my bad cells.”

She never doubted she’d reach the next chapter of her story. She believed she’d beat it, that she’d live to see the ending.

She even wrote about it. In her journal, she titled her story, I Had Cancer. It’s Gone. And I wished, with everything inside me, that it were true.

Now, the books rest quietly in Penelope and Luna’s bookshelf. The books inside, touched by tiny fingers, worn at the corners, stained with tears, hold her voice, her questions, the memories of that year. When I open one, I can feel Luna leaning close, whispering across the pages, teaching me how to live fully in the presence of fear, how to move through grief without letting it harden me.

The chapter we never wanted to write exists, but so does every page we shared. She is in the words, in the silence between them, in the spaces where memory and love meet. And in that quiet, I understand: the story continues.

And I understand that I am capable of far more than I ever imagined. Luna is proof of the resilience of the human spirit. I will carry that with me as my message to every person who crosses my path who thinks, I can’t get through this. I can show you my scars, I can show you what I have lived through. I am still here, still standing. And you have no idea how powerful you are and how much you are capable of.

The phrase lands awkwardly in the sterile air of the exam room.

I’ve never heard those words before. They sound clinical, but underneath them, I sense something primal, something is being asked of my body that it may not be able to give.

The ultrasound tech keeps her voice light, but I know the way fear tucks itself behind professional smiles. I can smell the shift in tone. The way a person trying not to panic starts talking about other things. She quietly steps out and brings in the doctor.

The room tightens.

The doctor explains, short cervix means risk for preterm labor.I feel my hands begin to fuse, clutching one another until they’re no longer separate. Just stone. One solid mass of held breath and silent dread.

“Have you had any cramping? Contractions?”

“No,” I say.

“Do you feel him move every day?”

“No,” I answer again, voice dry.

“Well… it’s still early. Any flutters?”

“Yes,” I reply, not knowing what I’m supposed to say. Not knowing what’s normal anymore.

She tells me they will look at the baby now, and that she’ll come back after.

The tech resumes her work, narrating the parts of my son’s tiny body with mechanical rhythm, spine, kidneys, femur, brain. But my mind is already drifting: What does preterm labor look like? When would I know? What if I miss it? What if I’m too late?

She circles the heart, again and again.

I remember the stories from the grief retreat, mothers speaking softly in circles about heart defects and missed heartbeats. I remember my friend who lost not one but two babies to congenital heart issues. I know too much despair to be witnessing this scan without panic. 

I also know, with a strange defiance, that I have paid my dues in suffering. I want to shout: I have served my sentence.

If the tech had looked at me with pity, I might have hit her.

But she doesn’t.

She’s efficient. Focused.

And for that, I’m grateful.

The scan seems mostly normal.

They couldn’t get a profile picture, his face turned inward.

Maybe he knows the world is watching too closely.

The doctor returns and flips through the images. She names organs aloud as if reciting a grocery list, her voice flat, clinical. She seems relieved by the read on the heart.

“We’ll try again next week,” she says. “To get a better look at his face. And we’ll re-measure your cervix.”

They don’t know why it’s shortening.

Progesterone therapy may help.

If not, they’ll try a stitch, a cerclage.

If that doesn’t work, maybe bed rest, we will see. 

“Take it easy,” she says.“Don’t lift anything heavy.

Call us if contractions come every ten minutes, if your mucus plug comes out, or if you start bleeding.”

Check. Check. Check.

I nod. No brainer.

Inside, I’m splintering. I am breaking again.

I hold my tears until I reach the parking garage.

Then I call Shaughn.

The second I hear his voice, it begins: the unstoppable faucet, the avalanche. I can let my heart be and it bursts like a shooting star and I am everywhere at once. Once the tears start, I can’t stop them. I’m drowning in the tide.

I think of Luna.

I wish I were pregnant with her again.

She didn’t want to come out, post-term, late and unbothered.

I don't blame her, knowing what I know now, her hesitancy was appropriate. Penelope, too, a scheduled C-section, perfectly on time.

Neither was eager to rush to this earth.

But this one… this little boy feels like he’s already reaching, pressing his tiny hands against the walls of my body, asking to come now. 

Is my body not a hospitable place? Is my grief too great for you to endure another five months.

And I’m begging him:

Please stay.

Please wait.

I need you to cook until December.

Because the thought of another long hospital stay- Of monitors, of IVs, of night after sleepless night under fluorescent lights- Of holding another child in my arms in an ICU-

I cannot. 

Or will I?

My heart has already been torn apart, stitched together with shaking hands and a needle pulled from my grief drawer. The holes haven’t healed. They still bleed, quietly, beneath my clothes.

I am not ready to do this again.

Am I being tested?

Is this some cruel lesson in resilience?

I want to scream:

I am out of strength.

Do not ask this of me.

One by one, my supports are being stripped away:

Sleep.

Movement.

Peace.

My body is a trauma center again.

And I don’t know how to get out.

I just told the people I love that I am pregnant.

I had just started to let myself connect with this baby.

Now what?

Wait, maybe hold off on the joy?

I just want to be boring.

To be normal.

Like that day at the fair.

It was June.

Luna had just had her second brain surgery.

She was freshly out of the hospital.

The world was waking up to summer, and she was, too.

Conejo Valley Days came to town, a dusty little fair with carnival rides, face painting, funnel cakes, and teenagers on summer break.

She wanted to go.It was the last day.

We took the whole family.

Luna wore her bucket hat, sat in her wheelchair, and beamed like she was lit from within.

She went on the dragon ride.

The swings.

She laughed.

She was alive.

In the back of my mind, I remembered the doctor’s words:

No head trauma for at least eighteen months.

We were supposed to protect her at all costs.

But I was tired of caution.

Tired of missing out.

Tired of being the sad family.

So I let her swing.

Let her wobble from ride to ride.

We danced while Penelope got tinsel in her hair.

We breathed in the scent of funnel cake and cotton candy.

We were normal.

Just for a moment. I exhaled hope, maybe the treatment will work, maybe we will find joy again.

And then:

The slide.

That long, colorful slide with burlap sacks and giggling kids circling again and again to ride.

The one she’d ridden since she was two.

She wanted to go.

I climbed the stairs with her. It was high, very high.

Asked the teenage attendant if I could ride beside her.

He said no.

Looked at her hat.

Maybe he knew.

Maybe he didn’t.

My nephew offered to ride next to her instead. Luna’s big blue eyes begging me, please.

And I… I let her go. Still recovering from surgery. Weak muscles, finding it hard to walk. Her body failing her, the only thing carrying her down was her bright spirit and my prayer that she could.

She sat down.

Pushed off.

And halfway down, her hat flew off. 

Her bald head caught the sunlight. Exposed. And just like that, we weren't normal. She lost her armor.

And then—

Boom.

Boom.

Boom.

Her head slammed against the plastic.

Once.

Twice.

Three times.

She looked like a rag doll, gravity impressing itself on her weak body. 

My heart dropped into my stomach.

I screamed, louder than I’ve ever screamed in my life.

“Fuck!”

My feet didn't touch the stairs as I flew to her side.

I reached her body and yelled her name.

She was crying.

Bleeding from the long line of stitches down the back of her skull, 10 inches of metal staples.

I scooped her into my arms and shouted for help.

My family moved as one, silent and synchronized.

We needed no instructions to work as one organism. My brother-in-law pushed the chair.

I held Luna’s head in one hand and Penelope’s hand in the other.

We ran toward the entrance.

Penelope began to cry.

So did my nephews.

Everything was loud and silent. 

In slow motion and so fast.

The medics met us at the gate.

I hurled medical history at them in one breath.

They called the ambulance.

Inside the truck, there was a moment of calm, she looked at me, she wasn't dead, she was ok.

Luna turned to me and said:

“Can we go back to the fair when we’re done?”

She smiled.

“I don’t want to wait a whole year to come back.”

I held her close.

“I’m so sorry, baby,” I whispered.

“I should never have let you, I’m so stupid, I’m sorry.”

“I just wanted to have fun,” she said.

And smiled again.

The EMT asked her,

“Did you have a good time?”

She grinned:

“The best.”

We ended up back at Children's Hospital after her team made enough noise.

The local hospital didn’t know what to do with a child like Luna.

They ran an MRI, no bleeding.

In fact, the surgical bleeding from a few weeks ago was better.

And even better, no tumor progression.

The immunotherapy was working.

A miracle hiding inside my mistake.

Most of Luna’s journey was beyond me.

I didn’t choose the cancer.

I didn’t choose the fight.

I didn’t choose the losses.

But the slide?

I chose that. I allowed it. And I cringe writing these words, in utter disbelief that I allowed that to happen to me precious baby, that I was protecting at all costs.

And I forgive myself.

For wanting her to feel joy. Desperate for her to play, to be free. For wanting to feel like any other family on any other summer day.

For wanting to pretend, just once, that life wasn’t a battlefield.

Just like now-I want this pregnancy to be simple.

I want to believe in an uncomplicated birth.

In peace.

But maybe this is the lesson, again:

You can’t control the slide.

You can only decide whether or not to ride.

After that, you let go.

After that, you surrender.

A few days before Mother’s Day, I feel it: a solid pit in my stomach. My heart drops, bracing for what this foreign holiday may feel like. The first mother’s day without my Luna. I worry about falling deeper into the hole I’ve been so carefully climbing out of. I don’t want mother’s day to exist. I don’t want anyone to wish me a happy mother’s day. It doesn't feel happy, it feels like you are spitting in my face. 

I spoke to another mom, whose daughter passed away from brain cancer. “Clear the day entirely,” she says. Her birthday and Mother’s Day have always been awful. The pit grows heavier, hardening.

I think about my daughter. I want to be with her. I miss her. I want a handmade card, with her perfect script. I want a project from the third grade class sent home. This is unfair.

Being a mother is one of my favorite things about being alive. When I imagine dying, the only thing that truly matters is Luna and Penelope. They are my world. Everything else, money, house, clothes, car, politics, dissolves into static. Someone once said to me, you can’t bring a U-Haul to heaven, and isn’t that the truths. My thoughts return, always, to them, my babies, my purpose. To the vast, soaring feeling of loving them. To the eternal, never-ending current of motherhood. They are my greatest gifts. They are everything.

I’m staring into the mirror, teetering on the edge of that endless well of sadness. Luna won’t be with me this Mother’s Day at least not in her body.

And then I feel her.

A nudge. A whisper.

Maybe this year won’t be as bad as you think. Maybe you’ll have another gift to open.

My eyebrows furrow. Something knowing stirs. I squat down, pull out the basket beneath the sink.

A pregnancy test.

It can’t be.

I shrug. What the heck. Just try.

It’s a rapid response test. The lines appear quickly.

Two.

I stare.

I slide the test into my purse, dazed. Maybe it’s too early. Maybe I’m making this up. But… last weekend, I craved a Reuben. My breasts are sore. Still, I’ve been enjoying this new chapter with Penelope. Hosting her friends. Making space for art. Exploring my path.

The timing isn’t right.

I think of Luna again.

"Promise me you’ll have another baby. Promise."

"I can’t, Lu. You have cancer. I can’t even consider it until ‘cancer’ isn’t a word we say every day."

She repeated it like a vow, “promise me” her eyes narrowing, sensing my discomfort with imagining new life while standing in this shadow.

I remember Luna touching Penelope’s cheeks, brushing her teeth, playing Barbies, watching Bluey.

“What if I had a hundred Penelopes?” I’d tease.

“Awwww, a hundred soft cheeks!” she’d squeal, biting Penelope’s face in joy.

I shake off the disappointment. Maybe I imagined it. My mantra this week has been: I am deeply connected with my body.

I peek again into my purse.

Still two lines.

Wait. I reread the box.

Two lines = Pregnant.

Oh my god.

I sit in my car, stunned. A strange laughter bursts out of me, a cry-and laughing, happy and hysterical. Then the fear hits.

Oh fuck. What did I do?

I am just starting to work again. What if Shaughn’s not happy? What if he is mad?

I’m barely surviving. What about sleep? What about hot yoga? I need space, my lifelines?

I close my eyes and cry. I imagine a baby, a tiny ear, soft black curls, the feel of a kiss on his temple.

It’s going to be okay. Let yourself feel joy. Let yourself feel hope. 

Penelope won’t be alone anymore. She’ll have a sibling again.

Her loneliness since Luna left has been sharp. She was used to being mothered, brushed, teased, played with. They shared a bed. Argued over dinner. Bickered over who got Mommy’s lap.

There’s something unglamorous about always getting your way. You lose the sweetness of small victories, the thrill of watching Cocomelon after compromising on Henry Danger for two episodes first.

There’s no comfort quite like a built-in best friend who sees your worst and loves you still. That’s what siblings are.

Still two lines.

I drive to Penelope’s school, then walk before pickup. No headphones. Just trees and air. I need them to guide me.

Where does my grief go now? Can I mourn my first baby while welcoming a new one?

Can joy and grief coexist?

Is there limitlessness inside me?

I count forward, this baby would be born in February. An Aquarius like me? Or a Pisces like Penelope?

Perfect either way.

I secretly hope for Pisces. I’ve always lived in a house of water signs, Shaughn a Cancer, Luna a Scorpio, Penelope a Pisces. This baby could tip the balance. More air. Less water.

I imagine being pregnant through Penelope’s kindergarten year. Facing the moms. My changing body. Can I hide it? For a while? What would they say about Luna? What would they say about us? 

Who the fuck cares?

In the end, only we matter.

But… what about Shaughn?

Just last night, I was ready to leave him. Now we’re unmistakably, inextricably tied. Again.

Another child means trying again. Committing. Again.

I laugh into the wind.

Of course, Luna. You’d want this. You adored your sweet daddy. Always defended him. Thought he was the coolest.

This would tickle her, that she sealed us in again. That she gave him more time. Time to heal. Time to change. While I’ve wanted to change everything.

I soften to the idea of softening to Shaughn.

I let myself imagine a new version of our family, one we haven’t met yet.

What if it’s a boy? How different would that feel?

Two girls. Two boys. Balance.

Peace.

I sit down on the sidewalk and play a song I haven’t heard since last summer:

"No Strings" by Ed Sheeran.

If we make it through this year, Then nothin' can break us, Trouble leaves, then reappears, But we've shown we can take it...

I cry hard. A woman walks by with her dog. She sees me but doesn’t stop. She lets me have my moment.

I glance down. I think of Shaughn.

Of how many versions we’ve been:

A drunk couple kissing on the lawn. Two people wildly in love. Travelers. Artists. Homeowners. Parents of a perfect moonchild. Communicative. Codependent. Addict. Avoidant. Simmering. Capable adults raising hilarious daughters. Parents of a child with brain cancer. Parents who lost a child. Parents of one butterfly, Penelope girl.

And now, something else.

We are broken. Lost. Unrecognizable.

But could we choose each other again?

Could we move through the depths of hell and still find the light?

Could he stay, truly stay, without abandoning me?

Could we hold Penelope in our arms, and beside her, another soul we haven’t met yet? Someone innocent to the ache around them?

Did Luna send us this soul? Is this someone she knows and is now gifting to us?

Could we be the best parents, again?

I walk to Penelope’s pickup, heart pounding with this secret. I say nothing. Just hug her, take her backpack, and drive her home.

Mother’s Day feels different now. There’s a flicker of hope. A shift. A soft light gathering at the edges.

I’m ready, almost, to tell them.

To hold space for their reactions. Their grief. Their joy.

I don’t know what the future holds.

But something is blooming.

And for days afterward, I keep peeking into my purse, just to check:

Still there.

Two lines.

Another gold thread.

It isn’t just affection.
It’s wiring.
It’s breath.
It’s bone.

It’s the silent connective tissue that runs through my body and hers,
as if we were built from the same current,
humming in unison.

I feel it still,
a fabric pulled into the invisible,
palpable,
but impossible to fully grasp.

There’s a soft precision in knowing your child,
how their humor unfolds,
how their questions bloom,
what they notice, name, and carry close.

Only that child carries the full story between you,
the inside jokes no one else understands,
the secret phrases built over years.

Luna held the book of our shared hilarity in her mind,
pages of one-liners, callbacks, and absurdities.
She played them like a quiet musician,
slipping them into moments with perfect timing.

She delighted us.
So funny. So quick.

“Luna, if you weren’t funny, we’d throw you in the trash can,”
Shaughn would tease.
And she’d laugh,
utterly secure in how deeply she was loved.

She was the beginning of us.
Shaughn, Luna, and me,
the origin of our family.

Later, Penelope folded herself gently into the shape we had made.
But Luna…
Luna held our world in her hands.

I trusted her deeply.
She told the truth,
led with her heart,
and carried herself with quiet discernment,
slow to warm, fiercely protective of those she loved,
motivated by a fire that didn’t need tending.

She soared in the space we gave her.
Love and trust were her oxygen.

As she grew, her truth-telling became a kind of art.
She held me accountable with playful defiance,
sassing me, correcting my stories,
keeping me tethered to the facts.
She loved being the truth-teller.

She adored our family
found safety in our rhythm:
art, cooking, snuggles, laughter.

She needed so little to feel full.
She made everything simple.

Being her mother was filled with ease and wonder.
I felt confident. Whole.
In awe that this luminous being
came from the love between Shaughn and me.

But after she died,
my memories of her as a vibrant child were hijacked.
Cancer began to rewrite everything.

Only recently have the good memories started returning,
not forced, just arriving:
her laugh ringing through the house,
the thump of cartwheels,
mornings filled with naked dancing and new music.
Even at eight, she crawled into my lap every morning.

I’m beginning to hold these moments without breaking
though they’re often still distorted.

A giggle becomes the beeping of machines.
Her rosy cheeks go pale.
Her curls vanish.
Her eyes change.

I squint.
Shake my head.
“Don’t take these, too.”
Don’t turn the shreds of what I have left into torture.

The light goes out,
and I lose her again.
The breath leaves my body.
Grief ambushes me.

But I know, this too will change.

For a long time, I couldn’t look at her photos.
Shaughn, braver in this way, made a book of her face,
a sacred archive of her light.
He helps keep her real. Present.

There are photos on my phone,
in our home,
her pink cheeks, her shining eyes.

And still,
sometimes, it crushes me.
To see her joy and not feel it beside me.
To feel the emptiness echo where she used to be.

I pray that, too, will change.

And then,
a memory finds me:

“Mama?” Luna asked one day, tilting her head.
“Why are farts funny?”

I tried not to laugh. “I guess because they come from your butt and make silly noises.”

She looked serious. “I farted during circle time and everyone laughed.
Then I wondered why.”

I laughed. “That is funny! People don’t usually fart in circle time.”

“But what if I just have to go and I can’t hold it?”
She was all logistics now. “What if we’re doing something?”

“Well,” I said, “you can ask to step outside.”

“I don’t really want to hold it,” she said, deadpan.

I tackled her onto the bed and we burst into giggles.

She was so unapologetically herself.
And I adored that about her.

Admired that, I still wish to be like her one day.

Luna’s confidence, her refusal to bend to what was expected,
was one of her most sacred gifts.
A sign of her connection to Source,
to herself,

She sang loudly, danced wildly,
moved her body however it felt the music.

We thought this was normal.
We were first-time parents.

But the more children we met,
the more we saw how singular Luna was.

“I love you like the air and wind,” she once sang,
“I love you like the brind (a made-up word)
of the sky.

And I just don’t care,
I just want a heartbeat, heartbeat,
I just want to go out to seeee eee ea…”

She is magic.
And the shape of her magic will never change.

I want to carry that magic with me
confident, whole, honest,
unbending in the face of expectation.

I want to keep alive what cannot be corrupted.
What lives beyond disease and death.
The thread between us.
The current still humming beneath my skin.

One day, I will join her again.
But until then, I will sing. I will laugh.
I will crawl into the lap of life like she did mine,
and let her love keep forming me.

Because the shape of our love,
the real shape
has never left.

It’s still here.
Still holding.
Still us.

But what do we do with the threads that no longer serve?
The ones that fray and dangle, tugging loose the rest.
There comes a time when even the tender act of letting go becomes part of the art,
of making something new, something stronger.
The whisper becomes a scream, and you know: it’s time to cut the pieces that no longer harmonize with the whole.
The old shapes don’t reflect the new view.
They must be set aside, with love, with reverence, for now.

With time, we learn to stitch a new piece,
to anticipate the next step,
to know the old patterns of another,
to notice what held us and what hurt us.
We grow better in love.
In trusting the unknown.
And in trusting ourselves.

Grief put my relationships through the grinder.
Stripped me down to only what could nourish.
After a lifetime of pouring into others, selfless, without boundary,
whether I wanted to or not, this year, maybe last year too, became my time to receive.

I’ve learned to open my mouth and swallow without apology.
There is no need for thank-yous in survival.
There is only the next breath,
the next comfort,
the urgent search for safety,
and the hands that keep you up right.
The ones who won’t let you give up.

There were those who came during diagnosis,
those who stood through treatment,
who came without calling,
who made Luna laugh,
who told me to put on my shoes, it’s time for a walk,
who fed us without asking.
Those who arrived as Luna crossed.
Many came right after
hearing the call, dropping their lives to be with us.

Some waited until the noise and crowds had quieted.
And then, there were the ones who came softly, weeks or months later, again and again
who knew, perhaps from their own losses,
that this part, the long, slow burn of after, of forever, is the hardest.
No more shock to shield the truth. Just truth.

Each wave brought something sacred.
Even the late arrivals, who hadn’t found the words before, now speak to my grief.
I am grateful for their growth, and mine.
For grace. For forgiveness.
For the resilience of friendship, rethreaded in a new way.

And then
there are the threads that must be trimmed or cut,
or saved for another time,
set aside with tenderness.

I will love you from afar.
But I am no longer the person who can take care of you.
I can no longer say it was okay
it wasn’t.
I need more now.
I am deserving of more.
And so are you.

I trust you’ll find your path.
But I can no longer pretend.
Through these tears, I see clearly.

And of course, there are the ones who never left.
The ones who weren’t afraid of the pain in my eyes,
who stayed when I couldn’t return a call,
who let me be quiet, or wrecked, or unreachable.
The ones who remembered: I am still here.
Still wounded.
Still worthy.

They reminded me, gently:
It’s okay to be.
They said: Of course. I understand. Don’t explain. It’s okay.
They simply stood beside me,
not as saviors, but as witnesses.

They never asked for recognition.
Never demanded my care in return.
Unconditional love, in places I never expected.
Unconditional love from so many, so many people.

How am I so lucky?

A thousand hands have held me.
Have pulled me back from six feet beneath the weight.
You are those hands.
When the light had gone out and I was feeling blindly
for something soft enough to rest in
you were there.

You were there.
Unconditionally.

His love has always been unconditional, quiet and constant, the kind that accumulates over years, settling into the foundation you build your life upon.

He raised my sister and me in a house that smelled of fresh naan, sounded like backyard splashing, and tasted like endless cups of chai.

On weekends, he cooked a grand breakfast for us and our friends, pancakes, eggs, naan, mushrooms. A full spread that still lives in the memories of those sleepovers. My friends still talk about Saturday mornings at the Masood house.

He wanted me to be good. He still says it, every time I leave his home:
“Be good, Saira.”

He wanted me to thrive. To succeed. To feel safe in the world.

He was born in Pakistan, the middle of six children. His mother died when he was twelve, and soon after, his father passed too, leaving six children suddenly orphaned.

But when he tells the story, it’s never laced with pity.
“I had my older brother and sister,” he says. “They took care of us. We had each other.”

I’ve often wondered how he became such a good father with so little guidance.
But perhaps it was those siblings, those early parents, who taught him kindness, grace, and the instinct to protect.

When I got pregnant with Luna, I asked him, “So, how do you feel about being a grandpa?”

He looked mildly confused, unsure of the correct emotional response.
“I’m happy for you, Saira,” he said.

When Luna was born, he wouldn’t hold her.

He stood at the edge of the room peaking over at her.
“She’s too small,” he said, nervous.

But one day I strapped the baby carrier to his chest and told him I needed a shower.
“Her head is too fragile,” he said, brows furrowed.
“You’ll be fine. Just a few minutes.”
Slowly, he started holding her more.

Listening for her soft sounds.

Learning her rhythms.

One day, he said,
“Why don’t you come sleep over? I’ll watch her while you rest.”

I would fall asleep at my parents’ house, and in the early morning hours, he would take Luna from the bed and walk her gently through the rooms. Showing her the lights, the trees, anything shiny that might catch her newborn gaze.

I would come downstairs to find them, Luna nuzzled into his chest.
“So… how do you like being a nana now?” I’d ask.
His face would bloom into a wide smile:
“I’m in heaven.”

That feeling only multiplied with each grandchild.
His love stretched and grew, becoming its own legacy.

Pool days. Naan, paratha, and buttered toast on demand.
Apples, peaches, and oranges peeled with quiet precision, arranged like offerings.

“Stop peeling everything, she’s so spoiled!” I’d say.
“She doesn’t like the strings on the oranges,” he’d reply.
“I don’t,” Luna would chime in, grinning from behind a mountain of fruit.

“I’m moving in with Grandma and Nana,” she announced one day.
“Another one bites the dust,” I laughed into the warmth of my parents’ love.

Every night ended the same.
My dad walked Luna to the car, pointing up to find the moon.
Then, buckling her in, he would begin their nightly ritual:
A hand to his eye, “I”
Hands to his heart, “love”
Fingers pointing to her, “you.”
Arms stretched wide, “This much.”

Luna copied him, giggling, mirroring his movements, “Bye, Nana!”

This ritual followed us into hospital rooms.
Even when she could barely lift her head, she still reached out to him.
He leaned in close and whispered, “I love you… this much.” His voice cracking as he spoke to her.

I remember walking my father to his car while Luna was inpatient.
His voice shook. Tears fell freely.
I had seen my father cry three times in my life.

“I’ve never been in so much pain,” he said.
“I can’t bear to see her hurting.”

His hand trembled as he touched the back of his head, tracing the line of stitches on Luna’s scalp. Imagining how she felt.
Fear and grief overcame him.

I saw it then, the echo of his mother’s death.
Of his father, his younger sister, his eldest sister.
Grief surfacing.
Long-buried sorrow, summoned without warning.
Luna’s cancer had torn a hole in time, creating space for his grief to sit and stay, maybe forever.

Her illness gave him permission to feel what had always been too dangerous to touch.

Later, during treatment, Luna lost her hair.
For his birthday, she painted him a canvas.

Two bald heads, side by side.
Underneath, she wrote:
“We are the same age. I am 7 + 1. You are 71.”

He hung it behind his desk.
He still smiles at it often.

I watch him with tenderness as he stares at the painting.
I see in his eyes the depth of his love for her.
The exquisite pain of loving her so much.

“My baby,” he says.
Our baby, I think.

The kind of losing your mind that is untethered. Wild.

The lack of sleep was part of it, living in the shadow of time.
The shadow of death clung to me, called to me, ticked inside my mind, gentle and constant.
I am going to lose her.

I would stare at Luna, loving her so intensely while mourning her in the same breath,
even as she fought for her life, fought to get stronger.
Longing for her even while wrapped in her arms.

The idea of leaving this planet became a frequent, floating thought.
It shimmered.
Escape gleamed like an exit sign, pulsing at the edge of my vision.

I was crawling out of my skin.
I could barely stand reality.
And I wasn’t sleeping.

The long day bled into a night of dread.
Terror and nausea rolled over me in relentless waves.
Every day was a crisis to get Luna stable.
The intensity never broke.

I was peaking, like a bad trip I couldn’t come down from.
The brown acid kind.
The volume turned all the way up.
Every sensation too loud. Too sharp.
All while being watched by my beautiful child,
unaware of what was coming.

Escape began to seem like the only rational plan.

I didn’t leave Luna’s side, except when my parents came to sit with her,
insisting I go rest.

Shaughn or I would walk to the Ronald McDonald House to check in,
a formality to keep our tiny, borrowed apartment.
A moment to cry, shower, or simply hear the silence, hear our own thoughts.

The machines never stopped.
Beep. Beep. No sleep.
That beeping was a slow, mechanical form of water torture.

I would walk out of the cold, sterile ICU into the Hollywood air.

Just outside the hospital stood Scary Vons.
That’s what we called it.

Off Sunset Boulevard. It bordered the ICU.

The parking lot echoed with screams or laughter,
fistfights breaking out among the tents,
shopping carts bound by rope or slicked with unnameable liquids.

I would pass through, watching the encampments,
listening to people talk to no one
and suddenly, I understood them.
I felt them.
It was my pain too.

I hadn’t seen it before.
How connected we all are.

I understood how they got there.
Maybe they went through what I was going through.
Maybe worse.

The line between us was thin.

How easy would it be for me to fall into one of those tents,
to escape this hell,
to never return to this state of consciousness?

To fully exit reality as I knew it.

I understood, suddenly, why some people can never get sober,
never face the reality of their lives.
It’s too painful to exist.

I got that.
I was in that place.

The step into the tent was a slow transition to the other side.

It felt like if I leaned just one inch forward, I would disappear.

I wanted to disappear.

I looked curiously as I walked too close to them,
signaling my wish to exit my Vuori jumpsuit and join purgatory,
or the land of the dead.

There was only one tiny thing keeping me from diving into black.

A thread.

Thin.
Gold.
Unbreakable.

It pulled me back hard.

It was made of Luna and Penelope.

As long as they were here, I would be too.

So I kept walking.

—

One of my first nights home, after more than a month at the hospital,
I slept at my parents’ house.
I could barely speak.
I needed so much help to take care of Penelope.

I could not sleep.

My body heavy on the couch.
No light in my face.

My parents watched me with endless worry.
I avoided their eyes, afraid even one glance would shatter me.

I stared into space, Penelope’s hair brushing my chin,
her small body curled on my lap.

I heard the door open.
I knew it was my sister.

I gently scooted Penelope off my lap and intercepted her before she came in.

I took her hand, gripping it tightly, and led her upstairs to my parents’ bed.
I wrapped her arms around me and fell into the sheets.

I shook, letting out primal noises, sobbing:

"I want to die. I can’t do this. I can’t live without Luna."

I screamed between sobs.

"I want to die. But I have Penelope. I can’t take care of her. What am I going to do?"

"I don’t want to be here anymore," I whispered.

"We’re going to do this together," she cried into my hair.
"Luna’s going to have her treatment. We’ll get through it. You have to stay. We have each other."

Her voice was shaking, unsure.
But her heart was holding me in place, like a balloon tied to the ground.

"I’m right here," she whispered.

And she didn’t let go. Not for a minute.

But how can I stay here?
How will I care for her from this place?
I don’t want this.
No. I can’t accept it.

She held me as I cried,
my throat closing,
everything going dark.

We lay there for a long time,
and I thought of the gold thread.

I could barely feel it at all.

—

I have worked with hundreds of people who were suicidal.
I’m a psychotherapist, or I was, a year and a half ago.

I thought I understood.

I asked the right questions.
Assessed ideation, intent, means.
Decided when to call the crisis line.

And I deeply cared for my clients.

But I missed something.

I didn’t understand the exquisite pain.
The justified urge to escape.
The overwhelming weight of continuing.

That willow trees and cupcakes,
walks outside,
family,
conscious breaths,
and kittens

They’re not enough.

I know now. I understand.
I feel for humans.

This is what is means to be human,

to feel the tension between joy and suffering.

I am not above these feelings.
Because I have these feelings.

If it wasn’t for my gold thread,
I would have left a thousand times.

—

When Luna passed away,
the gold thread keeping me here was only made of Penelope.

It was weaker now.
Shredding.
Thinning.

I would wake up and ache with the realization that I was still alive,
that I would have to go through another day.

No.

I wanted to go to Luna.

"Fuck this bullshit," I would think in my head.

What are we even doing here?

I’ve had enough coffee.
Enough political debates.
Enough winter breaks and Netflix and takeout.

I’ve sung and loved and danced.

What more could this life possibly offer me?

I used to be happy.
I exuded happiness, vibrating on another plane.
Levitating.

I loved my life.
Blissfully ignorant.
Unscathed.
Content to swim in the shallows.

Only diving into the deep for work,
a practice for the life I didn’t know I was training for.

Now, I am heavy.
Six feet underground.
Covered in mud.

The light trying to shine from my spirit as I grope for the past,
reach for some hint of the sun.

But Penelope, she mattered.

My tiny little four-year-old Peanut,
who had lost her favorite person in the world.

She had already lost her favorite person.

She couldn’t lose me too.

When I left for the hospital with Luna,
Penelope said her body would shake.

The thought of her shaking body wrecked me.

I wanted to believe she was too young to understand,
too innocent to feel the gravity.

But she knew.

Every bad MRI.
Every surgery.
Every transfusion.

Her body felt it.

She was linked, spirit to spirit, to her sister.
To us.
To our family’s unraveling.

We couldn’t hide from her knowing.

I would get a call from preschool:

"Did something happen this morning?
Penelope says she just needs to cry and be held.
She doesn’t know why.
But she’s been crying for twenty minutes."

Of course she doesn’t know.
There are no words.
She is the barometer for how broken everything is.

No amount of Beanie Babies from the hospital gift shop
could sway her knowing that our family was shattering.

There was no hiding from the truth:
Normalcy wasn’t our story anymore.

The image of Penelope’s body shaking
was enough to keep me tethered to this planet
for one more day.

The thought of her soft toes brushing my skin as she put herself to sleep,
her warm face pressing into mine,
her hair sweeping across her forehead
That was enough for today.

Luna would wait for me.

My desire to go to her was strong.
But she would wait.

"They won’t let you come," Luna would say to me in meditation.
"Not yet."
"There is still more for you here, Mama."
"You have to take care of my sister and Daddy," she would whisper.

"Okay, baby. I will," I would answer.

For one more day.

Shaughn and I wait within a circle of family and friends, gathered in quiet solidarity as our daughter Luna undergoes an eight-hour brain surgery. We settle around a table in the courtyard play area, a space that, though we do not yet know it, will become our backyard for the next year as we take up residence at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles.

In this moment, we are innocent to the scope of what lies ahead. We believe this, today, will be the worst. If we can just get through today.

We drag together three tables, each ringed with mismatched, brightly colored chairs. There’s food. Light conversation. A gentle attempt at normalcy. But my mind drifts constantly, inevitably, to Luna. What does she look like? Is she okay? Is she okay?

Shaughn’s best friend arrives with a cold brew coffee station, an act of kindness to fortify us as we sit in limbo.

When we brought Luna in, a surgery administrator handed me a restaurant-style pager. Not to notify me that a bagel is ready, but to buzz when the surgeon is done. I turn it over in my hand now, its plastic shell foreign and heavy. I glance at Shaughn with pleading eyes. Tears come in waves, and our circle folds around us, a living net of comfort.

Hours pass.

This is the beginning of a year-long meditation.

I sit inside each second, hypervigilant, porous, feeling everything. I can’t go back and I can’t go forward, I only allow myself to stay in this moment so I can keep my sanity. 

Hours pass.

Then Shaughn stands. His phone is to his ear. Though he says nothing, I begin to run, sprinting toward the surgery center. Why didn’t they page us? Did something go wrong? We arrive at the front desk, both talking at once: We were called about our daughter.

A staff member leads us to a small consultation room.

What is this room?

One slightly crooked picture hangs on the wall. Two chairs. A couch. We sit with the door open. Every muscle is clenched—jaw, shoulders, stomach, fists. My mouth is so dry it feels like I'm choking on my own tongue. This room is the kind where bad news is delivered.

Time stands still. What happened to her?

From outside, we overhear the admin and her coworker laughing, chatting about their weekend plans.

Shut up, I want to scream. We are drowning. Be quiet.

An eternity passes.

Then, Dr. Krieger enters.

“Everything went fine,” he says, easing into a chair.

Shaughn and I burst into tears. I swear at him, angry for placing us in this room, for not using the pager, for terrifying us unnecessarily. He smiles softly.

“No, she did fine,” he repeats gently. “We removed everything we could see. She’ll need time to recover, and we’ll monitor her closely. We wait now for pathology. But yes, everything went fine.”

“Thank you,” Shaughn and I say again and again. I hug Dr. Krieger hard without asking. He stiffens, unaccustomed to such intimacy, but smiles kindly. He offers Shaughn a quiet double fist-bump as he leaves. This will become our ritual over the next year when saying goodbye to Dr. Kreiger. Pound, pound. For Shaughn. For Luna. And For me.

We wait for her in the ICU, where a small army of doctors is already assembled. When she arrives, I can breathe again. Her chest rises. She is still breathing.

They stabilize her and tell us she should wake within the hour as the anesthesia fades.

We signal to our family and friends to go home. We’ve made it through. Tiffany stays, my friend, my sweet friend. She sits quietly on the couch while Shaughn and I hover beside our girl, somehow knowing not to leave yet.

The neurosurgery resident, Dr. Cody, enters.

“Luna, can you hear me? Wake up, Luna,” he calls, shaking her gently. “Still waking up. I’ll come back.”

Thirty minutes later, he returns, with two more doctors.

“Luna, wake up. My name is Dr. Cody. Can you hear me, Luna? Wiggle your fingers.”

The ICU attending arrives and begins her assessment.

“This is concerning,” she says, flatly.

I hate you forever, I think.

I was relieved and now I’m plummeting. The first lesson of the chutes and ladders of brain tumors. For every rise there is a crash. Guard your joy. Everything can change.

“Luna, wake up,” Dr. Cody says more firmly, pinching her shoulder. I begin to cry.

“Luna, baby, wake up,” I whisper urgently, pressing her leg. “Wake up!”

Another thirty minutes crawl by. Tiffany curls into the couch, her eyes stare at me.

“Luna, Luna, wake up, baby.”

I’m shaking. Is she gone? They said it went fine. Didn’t they?

Dr. Cody returns, his seventh visit, with the attending. His voice is loud now, urgent, inches from her face.

“Luna! It’s time to wake up!” He pinches her shoulder again, so hard.

Her face contorts. Her shoulders twitch.

Yes baby, I think.

“Good,” he says. “She was just still waking up.”

The ICU attending looks disappointed. I glare at her.

There’s the door, I think.

Relief crashes over me. My whispered prayers catch in my throat.

Throughout the night, the neurosurgeons return every thirty minutes.

“Luna! Wiggle your fingers. Wiggle your toes. Time to wake up!”

All night. All morning.

I do not sleep. Insomnia, my new shadow, is born here.

“Squeeze my fingers, Luna,” Dr. Cody calls out, steady and sure.

From the small twin bed I share with Shaughn, I sit up every time, searching her face for signs of movement, needing to know she is responding.

But where is she? Is she in her body? These primal reflexes, twitches and grimaces, are not her. She was just cartwheeling down our hallway. She had soccer practice three days ago. 

By morning, her shoulders, neck and thighs have tiny purple stamps emerging from hours of coaxing her back.

Mid-morning, I hover beside her. Her eyes open. She looks at me.

I cry.

“Hi, beautiful. There you are,” I whisper, my tears falling freely onto her blanket.

She blinks slowly, looking around as though waking from a long, complicated dream. Her gaze lands on her arm, and I can see she is already searching for answers.

But she is alive.

She is here.

“You are safe, baby. Mommy’s right here,” I whisper. “You are safe.”

I wait for her to complain. For a groggy “What happened?” For anything.

But she says nothing.

She cannot speak yet.

But her eyes are open.

She is in there.

She did not leave.

I lie back on the round swing Shaughn hung for our girls and let myself be still. I listen for Luna.

I began talking to her through prayer and meditation long before she passed. I love you. I will love you until the end, I’d think looking at her. I will love you until the end, it felt like she could already hear me without me needing to say anything to her.

On September 1, 2024, the day Luna died, Shaughn and I lay beneath this tree, wrapped in each other’s arms. A symphony of little brown birds sang above us, wild and free. We watched them and thought of our daughter, finally free from the terrible cancer that had ravaged her body. We stayed there until our arms went numb.

In the weeks that followed, I spent most of my time lying flat, mostly in the lap of my mother or in the arms of visiting friends. The tree became my sanctuary, especially in the mornings. I went outside early and spoke to Luna. And sometimes, she spoke back.

“I’m okay, Mama,” I heard her say.

“You have to take care of my sister and my dad,” she said once. I promised I would.

“I want a big party for my celebration,” she told me. I listened.

One morning, she said, “Auntie Kate wants ice.”

I walked inside, puzzled. “Did she say anything today?” my very pregnant friend Kate asked from the couch.

“She said you need ice,” I replied, unsure.

A strange look came over her. “I do need ice. I’ve been craving it and spent all night chipping it from the freezer. You have no ice”

Huh. Okay, I thought. I’ll get you a bag of ice. 

This was a strange superpower, but I would have preferred it relate to something deeper, something about me and my grief, not ice.

Another time, Luna said, “I want a stained-glass pinwheel.”

Okay, I thought. But tell me more about where you are. Tell me about me. What’s going to happen to us? What should I do?

“Pinwheel,” I heard again.

Weeks passed, and I let the request fade. Then one day, at Armstrong Garden Center, shopping for plants for Luna’s celebration of life, I saw them, a large, bright display of stained-glass pinwheels, spinning in the sun. I stood in front of the display, smiling. I felt warm. I felt Luna.

Which one do you want? I asked silently. One began spinning wildly. The only rainbow-colored one. I picked it up.

Okay. Check.

I placed it in the front yard, near Shaughn’s office window.

“Why did you buy that?” he asked.

“Uh… Luna told me to,” I said softly, a little embarrassed.

I was beginning to wonder if I was losing my mind. Was this real? Was I making it up? Was it just my own voice wanting pinwheels and parties and ice?

Did I have schizophrenia, with a oak tree specifier? As a clinician, I’d never heard of that diagnosis. Maybe I should look it up.

One day, lying on the couch, I flipped through a stack of books people had brought. Safe in the Arms of God, I opened it. “Why your child was not chosen as the elite,” it read. I slammed it shut. Clearly, the person who gave it to me hadn’t read this awful book or they should be kicked off the planet.

It’s OK to Not Be OK, a fine sentiment, but the title irritated me.

Beneath it: Signs. I barely glanced at the cover and placed it on top of the pile.

Weeks later, I remembered it. I downloaded it on Audible. I was devouring everything I could find on grief, death, and healing. Signs told the story of a medium and messages from the other side. The author encouraged readers to choose a sign, a way for loved ones to communicate.

I’m going to make mine so weird, I thought.

I started a list: orangutan, blue whale, peaches, maybe Uno cards. I shared it with Penelope and Shaughn. They added their own ideas. We joked about choosing something unmistakable: a blue whale in a cowboy hat holding a smoothie. It was a work in progress.

Then one morning, beneath the tree, a thought floated in: Rubber duckie.

Rubber duckie?

I sat up and looked around.

Orange.

Orange? Too common. I dismissed them both.

That’s not good enough, Luna. Let’s keep brainstorming.

I walked into the bathroom. A pink rubber duck with a cancer ribbon printed on it’s chest, lay on the floor. Someone had given this to Luna while she was alive. How did it end up here? I placed it on the counter and went on with my day.

Later, I dropped Penelope at school and volunteered in her class. I sat at one of the morning centers and glanced at the teacher’s desk. A sheet of paper read:

O is for orange, o is for orange, o is for orange, o is for orange, o is for orange…

The page was filled, top to bottom.

What is happening? I act nonchalant as I snap photos of the teachers papers to review after I leave.

That afternoon, I took our dog to be groomed. Sitting in the parking lot, a pink Jeep drove by, its dashboard covered in what else, rubber ducks. I snapped a photo and texted it to Shaughn, needing proof for my non-spiritual, non-psychotic husband.

When I got home, Shaughn’s friend was there, getting ready to do a new Dr. Seuss tattoo on Shaughn in honor of Luna.

“Check out all the tattoos I’ve done on this fake skin,” he said.

I glanced down. Clear as day, a slice of an orange.

Huh.

Okay, Luna. I see what you’re doing. We’re not choosing the sign together, you’re choosing it for me. Oranges and rubber ducks.

-

Time passed. The ducks kept showing up, especially on dashboards. On a walk with my friend Darren, I told him I was being followed. Accosted by ducks.

“It’s called ducking. You haven’t heard of this?” he laughed.

“No. Should I have?”

He pulled up Instagram. Turns out, people place ducks on cars as a gesture of kindness, appreciation, and love.

And just like that, warmth spread through me.

Of course you chose that, Luna. Of course. I felt proud of her, even now. The sign you are leading me to is a movement for kindness. That’s my girl.

-

Weeks later, we were back at a doctor’s office. Penelope had failed a hearing test at school, an exam with the nurse and now she failed a hearing test with a doctor. We were being referred to a specialist. I spiraled. How could something else be wrong?

Please, I begged silently. No more doctors. Haven’t I paid my dues? Please don’t let anything happen to Penelope.

I sobbed. I yelled at the scheduler when she told me the earliest appointment was in three months. I hate everyone, I have had it.

Tears blurred my vision. Then my eyes focus and I see a yellow rubber duck, perched beside the nurse’s keyboard.

I froze. I breathed in.

I see you, Lu.

Take a deep breath, Mama, she whispered. Penelope is okay. She’s with you. Nothing is wrong.

I looked over at Shaughn holding our daughter, our sweet Penelope, staring at me concerned. I zoomed out. She was here. She was perfect. Deep breath.

-

Months passed. I started working again. I met with friends, with others in the grief community. I began to speak, to share, to search for ways to fill the cracks in this new world. How could I support others? How could I offer anything when I was still falling apart? What am I even talking about? I am running around selling grief?

Every meeting was hard. Often filled with tears and also so much love, honesty, and depth. It felt important and I felt unsure.

One morning, I went to meet a woman who runs a wellness hub. As I crossed the courtyard to her suite, something caught my eye. I turn. A small purple rubber duck with red lipstick bobbed in the central fountain.

Take a deep breath, Mama, Luna whispered. Keep going.

I smiled. I felt her with me, holding me up, encouraging me as I stepped onto the next stone, this new path, toward healing, toward purpose, toward you.

-

Months later, I’m attending a retreat for mothers who’ve lost their children this month. The children vary in age and cause of death, but our grief is the common denominator. A Facebook group was created to help us connect beforehand. The prompts are simple:

Drop a selfie.

Name a food you don’t like.

Tell us your child’s name and age.

The responses vary, some posts have three comments, others fifteen.

Then one day, a question appears: Do you have any signs or symbols that remind you of your beloved?

Twenty-one comments. Every mother answers. How could it be that every mother has a sign? Every mother responded?

I read them all: dragonflies, lilies, cardinals, the number 33, rainbows, sailboats, strawberries, feathers.

And of course, I reply to the post: Rubber ducks and oranges.

I feel each sign and understand these women have the same superpower that I do, the same oak tree, the warp in the fabric of creation and connection. 

My therapist brain thinks about the reticular activating system, how, when we focus on something, our brain finds it in the world.

If you look for a rainbow, you’ll see one. We are powerful creators that way, drawing meaning and connection from the things we want to see.

But something in me stops that logic because I also know my daughter and she is a powerful creator. Luna brings me oranges. She funnels me words and memories to write about. She sends me new friends. She shows me her love, one rubber duck at a time.

I feel her even when there are no signs, just the quiet hum of love that doesn’t end. 

She is here. She is everywhere. She is inside me. And she is in everyone she loved and who loved her. And she always will be.

What once felt like doubt now feels like certainty. It’s the kind of certainty that the more you try to explain the more it slips through your fingers. You are to experience it to know it. It’s faith.

And my understanding has stretched beyond what my clinical training ever offered. I am no longer constrained by science or theory. I no longer see spirituality as something abstract or unreachable.

I understand that spirituality is simply another word for connection. A language of love that transcends the physical. A presence that lingers.

I choose to believe that we are co-creating this reality together. That we means Luna and me. And now, it includes you, too.

Luna is bringing me to you. Through my writing, I am sharing her light, and through your presence, your time, your listening, your love, her legacy expands. She lives on in every moment of kindness you offer. She lives on in every rubber duck that you are about to see.

Look at the power of this connection. Look at what we are building together.

And truly, that is all the spirituality I need.

Then, one day, 

Bom. Bom.

“Illusion is here, my friend, and hoping it’ll come back soon.”  

Bom.

“Who sings this, Mom?” Luna yells from the back seat.  

“Uh... Ed Sheeran.”  

“I like this one.”  

We get to know the song over the next few weeks.  

“Dancing with my eyes closed,” we sing together when it comes on. “Cause everywhere I go I see your face.”

“Search Ed Sheeran. Like, more songs,” she commands.  

“Play Ed Sheeran,” I tell the Tesla. It becomes our ritual.  

We dance. We’re introduced to Shivers, Photograph, and Boat. We fall in love with Ed. Luna starts taking my phone to read lyrics as we play his songs. Her brilliant mind remembers facts, lyrics, and album names. She starts to perseverate, everything Ed. I'm into it. We become big, big fans.

One morning, while Luna’s at school, I pass Shaughn in the kitchen.  

“Ed Sheeran is playing at SoFi Stadium in a few months. I want to take Lu,” I say.  

“How much are tickets?” he asks.  

I scroll. Prices are high- $500 for not great seats.  

“I don’t know…” I pause. “That’s steep.”  

Still, every few days I check again.

Then, on the morning of September 22, 2023, I get a nudge, from my future or destiny or something, to check tickets again.  

“Wait, did the concert already happen?” I wonder. I search.  

He’s playing tonight.  

At the Shrine Auditorium. How did I miss this?  

$120 tickets. Close seats. Must’ve been a last-minute release.  

Click. Purchase.  

I smile to myself. She’s going to freak out.

I wait for her after school, barely containing my excitement.  

“Luna, I have to tell you something.”  

“What?”  

“Guess who’s playing a concert tonight?”  

“…Ed Sheeran?”  

“Guess who’s going?”  

She looks confused for a second.  

“…We are?”  

“We are! And the seats are really good!”  

She screams. I join her. We’re ecstatic.

At home, we get ready. I let her sit in the front seat on the way to the show. She plays every song she hopes he’ll perform. “What if he plays this one?!” she squeals.

We’ve been to concerts before, but this is our first one, just the two of us. My built-in best friend and I, heading to a show. Life is really great I think.

We arrive. Lemonade and a hot dog for her. Ketchup all over her face. We find our seats.  

Ed walks out. Luna jumps up and down.  

“I’m going to play every song from my new album,” he says.

“Subtract, Mom! He’s playing it!” Luna is thrilled.

“But I have to warn you- the first half of the show is a bit depressing,” he says smiling.

Oh no, I think. Maybe this wasn’t the right concert to bring her to. Maybe SoFi would've been better.

“This song is about my best friend,” Ed says. “He died unexpectedly. This is about the sadness I’ve felt and will always feel because he is not here.”

Bom. Bom.

“Dancing with my eyes closed, ’cause everywhere I look I still see you…”

We sing. And then, surprisingly, I cry. 

Now, I am a Pakistani and Polish therapist. My DNA and training is stoic and unmoved, I don’t cry easily, something has to really be overwhelming, gut wrenching, to bring me to tears. 

And at this concert, I cry and cry. For 45 minutes. The connection is eerie, transcendent. I’m pulled into the future, rooted in this moment.  

“Are you okay, Mom?” Luna asks, concerned, as we sing.

“I’m just really touched by the songs,” I say, wiping away tears.  

Then Ed explains,“this next song is about my wife. After my friend died, I was so depressed. And my wife got pregnant. And while she was pregnant… we found out she had cancer.”

I cry harder. The words hit me like waves. He sings to us.

“This is no strings, you are who I love,  

And that won't change when we're falling apart.”

Ed plays for two more hours. By the end, Luna and I are fangirls, heart emojis floating above our eyes.  

We buy shirts. I choose a yellow one, with eyes closed on the front, the Subtract album printed on it.  

Luna picks an oversized tee for pajamas. The front reads: Life goes on.

I didn’t know how significant these two t-shirts that we purchased would be. That I would wear this shirt to encourage Luna, to call her to me, to show her my devotion. That she would wear her shirt and then it would hang in my closet, a small reminder that life goes on.

Driving home, we relive every moment. In the morning, we tell Shaughn and Penelope a play by play of the night.  

“You know something weird happened,” I tell Shaughn. “I cried through the first half of the show. His storytelling, the lyrics, it was so personal.” 

Luna puts on her new favorite, Boat.  

“Dad, this song is actually about his friend dying,” she says, then belts:  

“But the waves won’t break my boat.”

-

Nineteen days later, Luna hit her head.  

As she regained consciousness, opening her eyes to meet mine, I sing to her Ed’s lyrics:  

“And the waves won’t break my boat…” brushing her curly hair from her cheeks, we both cry as she nods, “the waves won’t break my boat.”

Time passed. We are trauma-bonded to Ed. His grief, his wife's illness, his life unraveling, it mirrored ours. We walked his path alongside him.  

A friend pulled strings to have Ed Sheeran send Luna a birthday video.  

She was famous, she told the nurses, gushing over the video, playing it again and again.   Showing anyone who would watch. “Hey Luna it’s me Ed I just wanted to take a minute to thank you for being a fan.” Over and over.

“You know,” the nurses said, “he actually played at Children’s Hospital in September.”  

What were the chances? We just missed him.

-

Luna underwent 30 rounds of radiation. To get through the daily sessions, she made a playlist-five Ed Sheeran songs that now live in my bones.

Each morning, I watched my brave little girl lie still as the machine encircled her head. I would listen outside the room, waiting for a familiar line to drift through the door:"I'm on my way, driving at 90 down those country lanes, singing to 'Tiny Dancer'..."And then I’d know it was time. 

That was my cue, Ed telling me to come in, lift her off the table, and guide her back to her wheelchair.

-

There was a music therapist who visited Luna every week while she was admitted at CHLA. “What song do you want to sing today?” she’d ask. Luna answered softly: “Photograph.”

The therapist would strum her guitar gently, slowing the rhythm to match Luna’s pace. And Luna would sing.“So you can keep me inside the pocket of your ripped jeans, holdin' me closer 'til our eyes meet…”

Not a dry eye in the room. We listened, hearts breaking and swelling, wondering what these lyrics might mean one day if she left us. Imagining how they’d feel if Luna became a memory inside of the music. A photograph in my jeans.

-

When she was discharged, we curled up together and watched The Sum of It All, Ed’s Disney+ special.It was almost unbearable for Shaughn and me, too raw, too close to home. But Luna loved it.

She felt seen. She understood her own pain more clearly through his story.

By then, she was tied to him. He had become a pillar in our lives, holding space for us through songs we didn’t know we needed until they were already inside us.

Then came F64, a song Ed wrote for his best friend who passed. A rap. Luna memorized every word. She sang it loud. She didn’t censor the cursing, and I didn’t stop her.

“Sing it, baby,” I’d say.

“The conversations at your grave's the only way to be close, I know you'll greet me with a smile on the day that I go…”

She rapped.

I watched her. I didn’t let myself think too far ahead. But I heard those lyrics like a whisper from the future. A promise I held onto.

-

Months later, we were connected with Make-A-Wish.

They came to interview her.

“I want to dance on stage with Ed Sheeran,” she declared.

They smiled, asking her to list two backup wishes.  

“There are no other wishes,” she said simply.

Just Ed.  

Just Luna.  

Dancing with their eyes closed.

-

Luna passed away before her wish came true.

A few weeks later, we got the email from Make-A-Wish:“Get ready Luna, someone wants to meet you.”

My heart sank.

It was too late. She was gone.

She would have been so happy. Dancing on stage with Ed, singing every word she memorized, looking out into a crowd that finally saw what I always saw: a goddamn rockstar.

But if I know my daughter, and I do, nothing is keeping her from that stage now. Singing along, jumping into the crowd. Belting out Castle on a Hill, and Galaway Girl, and Bad Habits.

She’s there in every lyric, in every verse.

Ed Sheeran didn’t just write our soundtrack, he became part of our story. His grief made space for ours. His music let us put words to the experience of breaking and being broken, he gave us permission to sing the words we couldn't speak out loud. 

And in return, we gave those songs a home inside our family.

Luna’s wish wasn’t about meeting a celebrity. It was about standing beside someone who understood the weight of love and loss, someone who held up the mirror for us to see ourselves. It was about having a connection so deep that every word rang with truth.

And in that way, her wish did come true.

Because she and Ed somehow, already danced together.

Eyes closed.

Hearts wide open.

No strings.

Just love.

Four Easter bunny plates.

Two matching flower dresses.

Two pairs of sparkly shoes, one for Penelope, one for Luna.

Two bubble wands. Two water bottles. Two beach towels.

Stamps that say Luna. Stamps that say Penelope.

Chore charts for Shaughn, me, Luna, and Penelope.

Two kinds of wrapping paper. Two Easter baskets.

A silk pillowcase. TY Beanie Babies.

Salmon sushi. Tikka masala. Cookies and cream.

Ketchup, especially in the tiny packets. Sour cream. Berries.

Bobby Flay. Ed fucking Sheeran.

These are the echoes.

These are the empty spaces, I trip over when I forget, even for a second, that you’re gone.

These are the everyday objects that whisper your name.

And my heart breaks on repeat. Every day.

Grief doesn’t knock politely. It crashes in, masked in ordinary conversations at the park, the grocery store, school, yoga:

“Do you have more kids?”

“Is it just Penelope?”

“How old is your other daughter?”

“My oldest is in gymnastics.”

“My middle one has soccer on Tuesdays.”

Harmless questions for them.

A knife to the gut for me.

And then there are the ones that carry the weight of implication:

“You didn’t want to try another doctor?”

“Was it Rocketdyne?”

“Everything’s plastic. Look around your house.”

“Did you read the ingredients?”

“You’ll never get over this.”

“I could never do what you’re doing.”

“This is the worst thing that could happen.”

“Losing Luna will ruin you forever.”

“Your grief is worse.”

“You just have to get through it.”

Shame. Guilt. Judgment.

Judgment. Judgment.

-

My neighbor crouches in front of my snack drawer, reading labels like she's in a lab.

“This one's fine. This one’s got too many additives. This one has so many unknown chemicals. All the dye-just throw these out.”

Shaughn and I just stare at her.

"Can you just pick something?" Shaughn says.

Her youngest son looks up at me and says, “Red 40 gives you cancer. If you give that to Penelope, she’ll die.”

My heart caves in.

Did I do this?

Did I poison my sweet Luna?

Wasn’t I supposed to protect her?

Am I hurting Penelope too?

Is this my fault?

Am I a bad mom?

-

A few days later, Shaughn’s friend sits at our kitchen island.

“I tested your water to see if it was contaminated,” he says casually. “It’s not bad. Could be purer, but better than I expected.”

I freeze in front of the fridge.

Our water?

The filtered water Luna drank every day?

Am I Erin fucking Brockovich now?

Is this house unsafe?

Should I have known?

-

A few weeks after Luna passes, my sister invites me to the beach. The life force is sucked out of me and I am a walking shell, but I pack my mom, Penelope and myself into the car and we go to the beach.

What my sister doesn’t tell me is that other people will be there, outsiders.

I step out of the car, trembling.

Six women. Their children.

The living. The normal.

I set up snacks for Penelope, lay down towels and chairs.

One woman comes over, hugs me, talks to me.

The others say nothing.

Our towels almost touch.

Still, they act like I’m invisible, looking down and away.

For two hours, I sit next to my mother.

My sister checks on me.

Penelope plays in the surf.

I stare at my mom and mouth: What the fuck?

What the fuck is this?

Am I not even a person anymore?

Do I scare them? Disgust them?

Luna went to school with their children.

She played soccer with them.

Sang beside them in choir.

Shared popsicles after school.

Does her death not even deserve acknowledgment?

Life goes on here.

It’s like she never existed.

And I sit, alien on a towel, orbiting a planet that no longer knows what to do with me.

-

Weeks pass.

We hold Luna’s celebration of life.

Those same women come.

Their children bounce in the bounce house, eat burgers, run through the grass, enjoying the party.

They walk past me again.

Still, nothing.

-

Here’s what I know:

People want to support me, but they don’t want to be me.

They don't want to believe this could happen to them.

They want to believe there’s a reason. A toxin. A mistake.

Something to point to.

Anything but the truth, that sometimes, life is cruel beyond comprehension.

Saying the right thing isn’t what matters.

But judging me? Ignoring me? Avoiding me? Pitying me while pretending not to see me?

Because who volunteers to sit in the endless ocean of grief?

Who wants to admit that a little girl got brain cancer

and no one knows why?

That no prayer, no green juice, no essential oil could stop it.

That there’s no secret biohack, no superior lifestyle that makes you safe.

Who wants to face that the parents did everything they could?

That there’s no fix, no next step, no silver lining.

That the only thing left is to sit in the shit.

Can we face that some things are beyond us?

That surrender, not strategy, is sometimes all we have?

We cling to the illusion of control to feel safe.

We curate, calculate, consume,

as if that will protect us.

But here is the deeper truth:

No one is immune.

We are all connected.

We will all suffer.

We will all grieve, if we are lucky enough to have loved deeply.

Being human is not about escaping pain.

It’s about acknowledging it. Bearing witness.

It’s about looking into someone and saying,

I see you. I’m here, too.

That’s all we ever need.

"This is my new favorite number. 32! It’s perfect," I said to my mom. "32, 32, I am a genius."

For a few years, 32 held its place like a crown jewel. Eventually, I flipped it. 2 and 3 swapped places and suddenly 23 took the throne.

"Mmm, 23 is better. I like that. Odd and perfect," I told my mom again. "What’s yours?"

We were checking out at the grocery store. She punched in her code. And looked over at me.

"1111. Or 11. Any repetition of ones, I like."

I thought for a moment. "Oh that’s good."

A few weeks later, I brought home my new best friend Tiffany.

"What’s your favorite number?" she asked.

"11 23," I said without hesitation. My mom glanced over, raising an eyebrow, a look that said, Really? My number?

I looked away, pretending I had never heard her say it, silently insisting that it was completely original. 1123 became a frequent passcode, key, door lock, PIN. Years passed, and the number traveled with me.

When my sister got married, I found out her husband was born on November 23rd.

"A social Sag? And on my favorite number? This is meant to be," I told her, laughing.

Then Luna hit her head.

She had brain surgery, and we waited for the pathology report. Every hour, every minute of every day, I repeated the same silent prayer:

Benign. It’s benign and we will just move forward from here.

I whispered it in my mind like a spell.

Please. Benign.

A neuro-oncologist came to the ICU. "My name is Dr. Davidson. We’re introducing ourselves just in case the pathology comes back malignant."

"I hope I don’t see you again," I said, more hopeful than I sounded.

She looked at me calmly, almost sad, but sure. "From what I’ve seen, you will."

Sink. dread.

I asked every person we came into contact with if Luna’s pathology had returned. And every time, I countered it in my head. Benign.

Nothing came. For thirty-four excruciating days, we waited. I didn’t sleep. I watched her breathe. I watched her laugh. I prayed.

Until 11-23.

November 23, 2023. Thanksgiving. My brother-in-law’s birthday. The cousins were visiting. They brought Luna down to the playground at the children’s hospital.

"Dr. Davidson would like to review the pathology report with you."

My heart sank. Heat crawled over my skin and burned my chest. Palms sweaty. Nausea. Dread.

Waiting, tension so thick it stole the oxygen. My mother-in-law and my parents were fighting about dinner invitations, scheduling and who is most important. Still bickering about being excluded, completely missing the reality unraveling in real time.

"Can everyone leave? The pathology report is finally here and you're fighting about who was invited to dinner!"

They left, still feuding. I could barely hear them. I was underwater. Shaughn and I waited, sweat pooling in my palms.

The nurse practitioner came in.

"Dr. Davidson is here, follow me."

We followed her to a silent conference room, a resident sat next to Davidson, watching and learning how to give this kind of news.

"So, how is Luna doing?" Dr. Davidson asked.

We stared.

"What does the report say?" I asked, voice dry, blank. She smiled and touched her hair, smoothing it back a few times.

"She has a high-grade glioma. Wildtype. A very aggressive brain cancer."

Stomach. Head. Mouth. Gone. No air.

A pull of gravity so fierce, pushing me down into my chair.

"Unfortunately with this cancer, there is no cure."

Her voice softened, slowed. "There is a treatment we think is best for her. We have seen success with this type of cancer. Radiation and chemotherapy. There are long-term survivors. She has a chance."

No air. No words. Silence. I tried to stay upright.

To stay conscious. Fog rolled in. I tried to find ground.
I asked questions, anything to keep from slipping under. Shaughn cried into his purple sweatshirt.

Then my parents appeared, my lifelines.
They sat beside us, tried to absorb the blow.

My dad asked, “How many people survive this disease?”

Dr. Davidson looked to me, silently suggesting he stop.

“There are long-term survivors,” she said again.

One thing at a time,” she said gently. “We can go over data later.”

At some point, Shaughn left the room.
I don’t remember when.

I was a shell. Part of me left that day. Evaporated, I begin my souls slow exit, with Luna. All the weight of positive thinking, and that it wouldn’t happen to me, was gone. Innocence was gone now. I was not exempt from life. No one is. I was just like everyone else. But worse, I was who no one wanted to be.

I blinked and found myself on the playground, sitting on my dad’s lap, like a child, sobbing. Someone offered me Thanksgiving dinner.

No, thank you.

I wouldn’t eat for three weeks. I could barely speak. My voice had been taken with my innocence and will to go on.

The volume of my shock turned all the way up.
There was no escape.
I begged God, take me back or take me forward,
but don’t leave me here.
Terror clung to me like sweat.

I wouldn’t think about anything else for months and months.

Nothing besides what happened on 11-23.