The large windows in the kitchen of my new home let in the perfect amount of sun for plant-rearing. So, after some meandering in the garden section of a big-chain hardware store, I bought a yucca and placed it next to one of the kitchen’s bay windows. After a few days I added a lily on the windowsill next to it and the two were fast friends, both leaning toward the glass to catch the brunt of the light when the kitchen was at its brightest. Soon I found myself preoccupied with watering them and watching them flourish, even as I accepted that I did so to distract myself from the news cycle at the time, which mainly featured a few benign fluff stories, the weather, and the national and worldwide death toll from the pandemic. In this way, the plants served their unwitting purpose. Then, the watering schedule I’d set for them shifted from a pleasant distraction to a full-blown mania that resulted in overwatering.

That, coupled with the right cocktail of gnat eggs and direct sunlight soon transformed the top layer of the yucca’s soil into a hatching pod. My kitchen, so bright with its area of exposed brick painted white and its backsplash above the stove, was now besieged with fruit fly larvae. Then, just as the last lily buds on the yucca’s neighbor began to open despite the chaos around them, my older brother called to tell me that our father’s cancer had spread to his bones. My father, the first person who told me that the simplest way to learn about the cycles of life and death was to observe it all around me in nature, was finally nearing the end of his own path. Moreover, daddy was right; nature, albeit a fraction of it that I accidentally cultivated in my own kitchen, was about to teach me about ephemerality, grief, and death.

My brother adjusted his tone as he explained to me what was happening to my father, and I recognized the shift in his inflection as one he often used for his youngest, most inquisitive daughter. As gently as he could, he told me that there would be no more chemo. After the call, I spent the next few days slowly processing the words “spread to his bones.” During that time, I also waged war on more invertebrate sunbathers, which were now no larger than grains of rice, enjoying the warmth of my kitchen floor. I thought of my father all the while, and the rule of threes that the eldest womenfolk in my family had always told me about when I was little. The crux of their superstition stated that many important things in life came in threes: death, calamities, successes–all in threes. I had always hated that bit of family-fueled lore and the way that each generation of women on my mother’s side kept reviving it, imbuing it with new strength by grouping all the joys and hardships of our family into neat triad bundles, but I also had to admit to myself in this instance that my father’s war was tiered that way too, with three battles rolled into one. First came his early scrimmages with addiction. Then, with his mental illness. Finally, prostate cancer entered the arena as an armor-clad champion, and how he fared throughout that battle was inextricably tied to the resolve he’d earned battling the other two.

I’m sure I could have viewed the infestation differently if I hadn’t lain eyes on the larvae while I was mourning the impending loss of my father. I had always been that type of child growing up, grasping insects by their wispy legs to move them from harm’s way, and crouching to observe brightly colored caterpillars. It also helped that the nature shows I watched back then often described writhing, translucent piles of larvae with terms like “burgeoning new life” and “resilient young.” But, in the midst of losing my father, I was too jumbled inside to think that way. The spider-dangling child who had merrily let all things live was buried in her grief, and I called the pest company the day the infestation began. My hopes were dashed during that call though, as I was cautioned against having high hopes about eradicating them in one treatment. Even the service representative’s words were triggering for me as my mind again clamped onto certain words as she spoke and a memory tunneled me back to where I had heard similar, like “impossible to eradicate with one treatment.” Bitterly, I remembered exactly where I’d heard them; it was during one of daddy’s first diagnostic visits. But I did perk up slightly when the rep told me that the larvae hated the cold and resolved right then to freeze them out.

My family rendezvoused at the hospice center in Bethesda to see my father and took turns going in to visit because of the facility’s Covid-19 restrictions. When I entered his room and saw how small he’d become, I decided to record our conversation. Because he was also aware of how, little by little, parts of him were dissipating (evaporating? I hate the term “wasting away”), he spoke to me as if he also knew it would be our last. I held onto each word he told me in his strained voice, which he pushed out between breaths that caused his swollen brown belly to bow upward and his too-visible ribcage to rise and fall dramatically, though some of it I wasn’t prepared to hear. He imparted bits of wisdom about my failed marriage, the ebb and flow of my iman—the word he used for my faith as a Muslim—and chiding me about my undone tasks and how I had less time to do them than I thought. I felt pangs of guilt when he was done and felt even worse when I returned to my icy home alone with a deeper hatred of the larvae than before. If my daddy wouldn’t be allowed to thrive, why should they? Invertebrate scum. They had no bones for cancer to spread to, causing pain excruciating enough to push a recovering addict’s mind to thoughts of needles and vials. They possessed no fingers to play the saxophone, or callused hands to pat the hijab-covered heads of their daughters. None had vocal cords to recite the long, rhythmic Sufi prayers that my daddy knew by heart. In fact, they had no hearts at all. They simply existed to multiply and consume, like cancer.

After the visit, my mom and siblings flooded our family group chat with updates from his doctor, but the constant pinging sounds became unnerving, so I silenced my phone entirely. I knew that a portion of them were concerned texts from my mother, who was concerned with my extermination method and wondering how I was faring in the cold. I also knew that there was a simpler way to mute their texts, but I wanted to do more than that. I wanted to mute everything around me—the omnipresent whir of my air conditioner, sporadic clatter from the icemaker in my fridge, and the moan of the wooden floorboards under the large feet I inherited from my now-fading father. It took three days to freeze all of them, and each night was spent bundled against the cold, phone in hand as I replayed clips of my father playing his saxophone or smiling proudly with his arm slung around the shoulders of one of his many grandchildren. When morning broke after each chilly night prior, I’d rise and sweep the frozen ones into my dustpan. Once lively and determined in their trek across my linoleum, the cold had since left them discolored and shrunken. By the fourth day their short lives were done, and father’s life was too, leaving me with a clear kitchen, but clouded mind. I turned up the heat and let the warmth return to my kitchen, which I paced as I contemplated the life of both the prospective fruit flies, and my father’s. Standing in the fully restored kitchen on the morning of his janaza, or funeral, with its floor tiles warm against my feet, I decided that what nature taught me about fruit flies and my father was that they were both fragile creatures who had, however briefly, enjoyed their time in the sun. I also decided that surviving my grief and allowing myself some joy again meant reviving the wisdom of my foregone womenfolk and looking at my father’s life in a different light. His battles came in threes, but his blessings did too: bones that bore the weight of his seventy years, callused hands that patted the heads and wiped the tears of his six children, and the skilled fingers that told stories through his horn so vividly that sometimes, I still hear them in my dreams.

My lover is dying.

We met late, both forty-two, both Elvis diehards, both into hiking through spectacular scenery in remote locations. The Inca Trail was endless shambolic staircases, an acute episode of food poisoning, and the coming together of two akin spirits. The priceless reward for such a brutal trek was not the breathtaking abandoned citadel of Machu Picchu, but the unparalleled joyful finality of discovering one’s soulmate.

We would go on to explore the planet together, trekking its tallest peaks hand in hand, from Tanzania to Tibet. We devoted hours of the working week to running and biking in preparation for the extreme elevations we would encounter during our annual high altitude expeditions. He and I crafted aerobic capacities to rival that of any Olympian; our bodies specialised in the ultra-efficient oxygenation of red blood cells.

How mercilessly ironic for him to be dying due to the failure of his lungs to provide him with sufficient oxygen.

My lover is dying of acute respiratory distress.

My lover, the man whose embrace evokes in me both a comforting familiarity like a ticking clock to a weaned pup, and a stoking of the flames of passion as though our romance were freshly forged. I know the coordinates of his every last crease and mole, could scrunch my eyes and trace his outline in precise detail, have learnt by heart the exact sag of his stomach, bulge of his biceps, sharp lines of his shinbones.

His body is not new, but we all know where beauty lies, and to this beholder it is a work of art encasing his precious soul; together they manifest as my fiercely cherished life partner.

Our love is not new either, yet it remains a vibrant shade of magenta. Never did it pale to pink, or worse yet, fade away entirely.

My lover is my heaven, my haven, my home.

My lover is dying in the hospital, alone.

Prior to this surreal era, we traversed a good portion of the globe together, though a number of further-flung destinations  – Reykjavik, Tenerife, Rapa Nui – are yet to be struck off the bucket list. They shall remain forever unstruck; what was once a potential future is now a wistful fantasy doomed to the confines of my grief-stricken imagination.

It was rare for either of us to travel alone, but with my mother’s recent ailing health, we agreed it was best I stay home while my lover journeyed to London to meet his newest nephew.

We weren’t to know he would be swept up in the middle of a pandemic and struggle to catch a return flight. We weren’t to know that upon landing he would commence a fortnight of hotel quarantine only to be diagnosed with coronavirus four days in. We weren’t to know his dry cough would deteriorate into a wet one and he would be hospitalised one week later.

My ardent anticipation of a joyful reunion crumbled to ashes on a forgotten hearth, bone-cold and empty.

The hospital is only fifteen kilometres from home, but it may as well be on Mars. I cannot go there, cannot see him, cannot touch him. I hadn’t seen him in two months, since he kissed me farewell at the airport with star-sprinkled eyes, eager to meet the new baby, reunite with his brother, discover more of London; to go, do, live.

Then I got the call, far too early in the day. I was still in bed, still sleeping on my own side even if my lover was not there to occupy the other. By keeping out of his space I could somehow pretend that he was in it, right where he belonged.

They had commenced palliative care, the nurse said. They didn’t expect him to see the other side of the weekend, she said.

His side of the bed would remain empty forever.

Its vastness was suddenly overwhelming, and I jettisoned myself from beneath the warm covers to collapse on the hardwood floor.

The nurse’s voice continued to flow. I was invited to come to the hospital and see him.

To see him!

I arrived almost before she had hung up.

My phone, my watch, my glasses were to be left in the car. My temperature was to be normal, my flu vaccination to be current, my name to be signed at the bottom of a lengthy disclaimer form. A nurse would supervise my donning of the required protective equipment, beginning with a white mask for my face and a net to restrain my hair. My first attempt at putting on the mask was deemed incorrect, and I was compelled to toss it into an overflowing bin and start over with a new one. Then sanitise my hands. Put on surgical booties to cover my shoes. Then sanitise my hands. Put on full body smock, sanitise hands. Then on with a plastic face shield and two pairs of latex gloves for good measure. I was done up like an astronaut, ready to enter an alien land.

The nurse led me through plastic-sheeted halls to my lover’s ward, told me I had exactly fifteen minutes, and warned me I may find the experience confronting. I was bursting out of my skin to see him, yet I was also apprehensive. This was the last time I would ever get to spend with him. This was so special, so bittersweet, so momentous; I wanted nothing to go wrong. I stepped through the doorway.

My lover was lying on a hospital bed. I was allowed no closer than one and a half metres.

His eyes were open.

His skin was grey.

His head, my lover’s sweet darling head, lolled to one side at an awkward angle.

He is on morphine, the nurse told me.

The man who held my heart was reduced to this broken, pitiful being before me. The man I had chosen to share my life with was slipping through the veil between this world and the next. The man in whose eyes I had always sought and found reassurance was trembling and feverish, and I could not comfort him. There was to be no touching, no proximity of any kind.

I spoke to him lovingly, soothingly, repeatedly, then as he failed to respond, urgently. Hidden beneath a mask and gown, I called to him, eyes welling upon the realisation.

He did not recognise me.

His breath was a rattlesnake, and when it burst into a fit of coughing the nurse whisked me from the room, allowing re-entry only once his breathing had stabilised.

I gazed forlornly at what was left of the man I loved, a crippled shell and woozy mind no longer fit to house his noble soul. The one with whom I had lain a thousand times was departing his earthbound vessel, was beyond my reach, beyond even my voice.

“It’s time to go,” the nurse said.

I could barely choke out a final farewell.

“Goodbye, my love.”

I don’t know if he heard me.

We should have been attending my niece’s wedding in Adelaide in December. Her mother, my sister, lost her husband two years ago, to a long battle with a brain tumour. She had to watch him slowly wither and decay over a period of many months. She was at his side from the time of diagnosis right through to the time of relinquishing her job to bathe, feed and wipe him like a baby. When he was finally dealt the mercy of death, she was at his bedside, playing him a soft score of his favourite tunes, stroking, soothing, whispering goodbye.

Would anyone play the King’s records for my lover, a soundtrack to his egress?

As I sit at home, numb with not knowing, my lover is erupting in pink secretions from the blood cells leaking into his airways. I crave news of his condition, yet dread it. He is drowning in his own fluids.

I miss him. I don’t think I can live without him.

We should have been celebrating his birthday with sponge cake in September, planting the garden with tomatoes in October, toasting our anniversary with moscato in November.

Instead, he is dying.

The two decades we spent in a divine state of oneness feel like an eternity, for I cannot remember what my life was like prior to his entering it. An eternity that was not long enough, however, as I dread to imagine a life without him, having known him, loved him, cherished him every day for the past twenty years.

How grateful I am for each priceless minute he and I were blessed with one another’s company. From those budding moments high in the Andes through to mundane evenings in living room silence, from the long Sunday afternoons of exuberant lovemaking to the hurried little good-bye pecks on the way out the door on work mornings; I am thankful for it all.

The manner in which this joy has all ended leaves me like the ruin of a war-torn city, lovelorn for its ill-fated citizens whose memories stalk the streets in the absence of their earthly bodies.

We all must one day die; certain knowledge of this is the penalty for being born human. While a premature emptying of the hourglass feels as though one has been shortchanged, no-one can know when their final grains of time will pass.

I am not bitter that the man I love more than I ever thought possible must depart this world so soon. But I am devastated I cannot be with him when he does.

My lover is dying, and I can’t even hold his hand.

If there’s one thing I learned as a medical trainee who deals daily with death, it’s that humans want to be remembered. We want to survive the tides of the future. We want to survive death. All our lives are devoted to doing something, to leaving a mark on this earth. Too often, however, all we manage to leave is a scar.

As John Green once put it (in his novel, The Fault in Our Stars), we are like a bunch of dogs squirting on fire hydrants. We poison the groundwater with our toxic urine, marking everything as mine in a ridiculous attempt to survive our deaths.

Nowadays, this phenomenon has grown exponentially. Especially in the eyes of the younger generation, being famous is the equivalent of being alive, successful, and happy. And by constantly living on social media, eyes locked on these “superstars” and their viral videos, they convince themselves that this is what life is all about. But it is not. What truly matters is not how many people know you. It is what you are known for by those around you. Spread love and do good, and you won’t need to be a star to shine. Just like Maria.

And this is why I want to tell her story.

Maria was different. She walked lightly upon the earth. Maria knew the truth: We’re as likely to hurt the universe as we are to help it, and we’re not likely to do either. People will say it’s sad that she left a lesser scar, that fewer remember her, that she was loved deeply but not widely. But it’s not sad. It’s triumphant. It’s heroic. Isn’t that the real heroism?

April 14, 2020. Italy.

On this particular Tuesday, I was making the last round on my patients before my 16-hour shift ended. In medicine, we are used to working long and tiring shifts; however, with the novel Coronavirus pandemic in full swing, we had reached new heights. But we were all clenching our teeth and working hard to keep our healthcare system afloat. At the time, the situation was overwhelming in Italy. The sad truth was that, often, we had to make deliberate decisions on who we wanted to save and who we were going to let die because we couldn’t give them proper and timely treatment.

The heaviness of knowing that your decisions may cause the death of someone is agonizingly painful. It’s like an ocean crashing on you, letting you come afloat just to take a quick breath, before pulling you down again. It’s not easy to ignore the pleas of the families to save their loved ones. Truth to be told, it’s depressing, and I don’t think there are words that can properly express the sense of hopelessness that one goes through.

As Virginia Woolf once wrote:

English, which can express the thoughts of Hamlet and the tragedy of Lear, has no words for the shiver and the headache… The merest schoolgirl, when she falls in love, has Shakespeare to speak her mind for her; but let a sufferer try to describe a pain in his head to a doctor and language at once runs dry. And we’re such language-based creatures that to some extent we cannot know what we cannot name. And so we assume it isn’t real. We refer to it with catch-all terms, like crazy or chronic pain, terms that both ostracize and minimize. The term chronic pain captures nothing of the grinding, constant, ceaseless, inescapable hurt. And the term crazy arrives at us with none of the terror and worry you live with. Nor do either of those terms connote the courage people in such pains exemplify.

On the other hand, the pandemic has also restored my faith in humanity and brought to light some amazing stories. For example, the story of Maria. She was an 82-year-old woman who had been admitted to the hospital one week before, in the intensive care unit. On that Tuesday, I was checking on her to see if her condition was improving or not. She shared her room with two other patients. When I came around her bed, she had her eyes slightly open. Her heartbeat and systemic pressure were perfectly normal for a person of her age, even though she had great trouble breathing properly.

“Hey, Dr. Ahmet, how are you doing?” she said, managing a smile.

I smiled back. Typical of Maria: even though she was the one in a hospital bed, she always asked me if I was doing fine first.

“I’m good. Thanks. How about you?”

“I’m doing alright…” Her voice trailed off. “Actually… it’s a bit depressing, to tell you the truth. All these white walls and gloomy faces.”

“For the white walls, I could ask someone to move you to another room. Just tell me which color you prefer. And you are right. We should paint them.”

“Nah, the walls are not a big problem. It’s the gloomy faces that I would like to change…”

I tweaked the valve of the oxygen canister. “You are asking me to do something really difficult,” I said. I was completely exhausted, both physically and mentally. It had been almost a month since we began working non-stop, and at times it seemed all in vain.

“Why?” she sounded surprised, “Being happy is not supposed to be that difficult. You know, dear, I remember the old times, when we used to dance mindlessly and laugh together. I loved it. And dancing really washes away all stress.”

“But you didn’t have to deal with a pandemic,” I said, scribbling her physiological measurements on the clinical report.

Maria laughed. “Ahmet, we had to deal with a deadly war, don’t underestimate the oldsters. But you know what, it isn’t the situation you’re in that should determine your happiness. It’s you. Being positive is a choice.”

“Maria, you could be a motivational speaker.”

“I know. ”

When I was completing my round, I kept thinking about Maria’s words. It was true: happiness came from within. But sometimes it was so hard to find.

Maybe we were not even trying. For my part, I thought it would be careless to be happy among all the pain and affliction. However, Maria’s words made me think that with my depressed mood and dispirited face, I might be one of the causes of that suffering.

I would definitely not be able to fully eliminate it, but I could at least try to alleviate it. I had to. But how? It felt like wandering in a room full of darkness: you know there is a switch somewhere, but the true challenge is finding it.

The next day, I came into her room for the usual check-up routine.

“Don’t I look like a zombie?” she said as soon as I entered the ward, pointing at the tubes that ran from the ventilator to her smiling mouth.

“Not at all,” I answered, glancing briefly at her clinical report. “120/80 mmHg blood pressure, regular heart rate at 75 beats per minute, osmolarity of 295 mOsm/L. You are doing superbly. A few more weeks and you’ll be out of here.”

The smile on Maria’s face faded, washed away by something I couldn’t see. “A few more weeks?”

“Yup. And then you will be able to get back to your children and nieces.”

“Ahmet.” Her voice sounded strangely serious. Usually, Maria was the one who brought laughter to her ward. After all, she was the one who told us to always stay positive. “I have to ask you for a huge favor. ”

“Tell me; I’ll do my best to help you.”

“Look… I’ve been following the news recently…and I know how many hardships you are all enduring.”

“It’s nothing. Really. We do it because it’s what we want to do.”

I meant it.

“I know. I know,” said Maria, crisping her lips in an irritated line. “But I also know that there are too many cases and too few ventilators. You have to choose between who you will save and who you will let die.”

I didn’t answer. My throat felt like a tender patch of heat.

“Well…” continued Maria. “The favor I want to ask you is that you give my ventilator to someone else. Just let me see my children this evening and then I’ll be ready to go. And, oh, don’t tell them about this. Tell them that I couldn’t make it. This will be our little secret.” She winked at me, her big blue eyes glittering.

“But… in a few weeks, you will be out of here,” I protested, pursing my lips and exhaling slowly, to calm myself. “Why are you choosing to die?”

“Oh, my dear. Look… as Steve Jobs put it ‘death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it and that is as it should be because death is the single best invention of life. It’s a life-changing agent; it clears out the old to make way for the new.’ I am old now.” And here she pointed at her wrinkles, smiling again. “And I want to give the gift of life to someone younger than me. I want to give them their second ticket to life, so that they can get to live pursuing their passions and with no regrets. Just as I did. This is my last wish. If you grant me this, I can leave this Earth in peace. And the only thing you have to tell the person who will take this bed is to not be scared of death because it will make you miss your life. You can’t beat the Reaper by living longer. You can only beat it by living well and fully. Do the things you want to do before the Reaper shows up. Because it will be too late then.”

And these were the last words I heard from her.

That evening, after her children went away, she unplugged the ventilator herself, and when I came into the room she was lying on the bed, with a peaceful smile on her face.

*Maria is a pseudonym used for privacy concerns.

On my sixteenth birthday, my mother gave me a leather-bound journal with my name embossed in gold on the front cover. I stared blankly at the blank pages with pale pinstripe lines traveling end to end, crowned with a fleur-de-lis watermark.

I sat in my oversized wicker butterfly chair, my legs crisscrossed tightly and forming a natural table, trying to think of something to write, only to end up tossing the journal on the top shelf of my closet, waiting for dust to cover it.

When the pandemic first made headlines, I thought, “now what?” I had already been through so much.

Fewer than four years before, my husband had died from pancreatic cancer. Initially, his prognosis was grim. He was given one year to live, an overwhelming reality for a man in the prime of his life. Five weeks later, he collapsed and passed away in our living room in the middle of the night.

There is a type of silence that permeates the air in the aftermath of a tragedy. It’s palpable. In those first few minutes, that silence engulfed me. I felt a pain as if something had been physically drawn out of me. All alone, I kissed him for the last time before dropping my head and crying, “What do I do, now?”

I needed to find a strength that was not in my nature. We had three children. My priority was never to let this define their character, never to use their father’s death as a crutch or have it hang like an anchor around their necks.

Losing my spouse left me confused. How does the coffee maker work? Is today trash day? I had not realized how much I depended upon him. It’s not that I was subservient to him—quite the opposite. We were equals. But I had gotten lazy. It was easier to let him handle it all. Honestly, the right hand didn’t know what the left was doing. I didn’t know the individual passwords to our accounts, making it impossible to pay the bills. Without a paper trail, I didn’t know what bills we owed. I’m embarrassed to say I was unaware of the amount of money we had in our savings account. I found out it wasn’t very much.

From that day forward, I busied myself, often to the point of exhaustion. I functioned at high speed; I had a job to do. As a single mother, time rapidly became my enemy. I was trying to cram too many things into a day, coming up short, always late to games and social events. Notorious for being on the phone during my kids’ games, multi-tasking was my mantra. Everything got my full 25% attention. I took pride in walking the dog while talking on the phone and still listening to a podcast. My mind was always somewhere else, daydreaming of a different situation.

Even if you have never lost someone, you can imagine how it feels. We have all seen enough Hallmark movies. What I was not prepared for was getting smacked when I least expected it. There I was standing in the local market’s produce section when our wedding song played over the loudspeaker. Suddenly, I burst into gut-wrenching sobs, so severe I had to rush out of the store, pushing my way through the sea of pitying stares. I still had to go back inside because I needed milk and eggs.

Eventually, without his income to support us, my children and I had to move back into my childhood home. My mother had passed away years ago, but I still looked for her to protect us. It was a rough time in our lives. We yearned for life to be the way it had been.

It took all three years, but we healed. I went back to working full time. Our aching hearts lessened; this house took on our personalities. In February, my daughter celebrated her sixteenth birthday in grand style with a party. My son had graduated college and launched his new life. I felt joy for the first time, realizing we had come through that dark time, and we were back on track.

Then the pandemic hit. Like some at first, I believed it was just the flu—that it couldn’t hurt me.

Major work events were canceled, cities went into lockdown, the numbers staggering. Friends were testing positive. Some were getting sick. I was laid off from my job. My oldest son moved back home, putting his life on hold, and at-home virtual learning became a real thing. I felt like we were spiraling backward, our arms and legs flailing. Once again, I was overcome with a fear I hadn’t felt for years. The ground beneath us that we had worked so hard to strengthen was giving way.

I was living from my paycheck to paycheck, with very little savings as a cushion.

On the evening news, a woman about my age, with long blonde hair and blue eyes, was interviewed in her car while waiting in a food line, her kids in the back seat. “I have never needed to do anything like this before,” she told the interviewer.

The resemblance to me was uncanny. Our closeness to that situation made me quiver. I knew the look on my face registered my horror just by my kids’ frightened expressions.

“We’re okay,” I reassured them.

The pandemic wasn’t the only crisis looming over me. Without carpools, activities, and events, I was faced with an abundance of time. I didn’t know what to do with myself.

I embraced being able to spend time with my children, and they had to spend time with me, trapped on this island together. We streamed shows and played games—board and VR, which frankly made me want to throw up. We laughed. More than that, we talked, we talked about their Dad and the old house and this house. I was relieved to hear they liked this house just as much. We remembered the fun times in this house with their grandmother. I had never taken the time to sit quietly and listen to them before.

I was not the type to put together a puzzle, nor could I create international meals or strive to bake the perfect sourdough bread. I did like to garden.

Although everyone thought I was crazy, I was inspired to build a vegetable garden on our hill. The hillside was transformed from a downward slope to terraced, level areas. We built raised planting beds, filled them with soil, planted seeds in neat rows, and marked each row with hand-painted signs nailed onto old pieces of wood.

Every night my body ached; my arms were sore. The sun had tanned my skin in odd patterns depending on what clothes I wore. My manicured nails were becoming those of a gardener with the paint chipped, broken, and cracked. When I was putting gas into the tiller, some dripped on my hand, removing what little polish was left. I soaked a rag and finished the job.

And yet, I always felt fearful of what could happen to us. Would we end up in long food lines? I found myself up nights, bombarded by a litany of what-ifs: What if we get sick? What if we become homeless? What if? What if? Always circling back to the same belief: if only my husband were here, he would know what to do.

My mother used to say, “if the same thing keeps happening, it’s because you didn’t learn your lesson.”

One hot afternoon while I was sitting outside, my sixteen-year-old daughter handed me that old journal of mine. “Here, I found this in my room,” she said.

Having forgotten all about its existence, I opened it to the first page. In my mother’s handwriting was this:

You are stronger than you think you are.
When you experience and survive your biggest fear, you will become stronger. If what you thought would break you didn’t break you, then you will be prepared for another storm.

The pandemic was the perfect storm.

The words my mother had written may have meant nothing to me when I first read them, but on that afternoon, they meant everything to me. What were the chances of this journal showing up?

I sat in my backyard, without a to-do list at hand, without the responsibility of watching kids in the pool. I. Simply. Sat. In. My. Yard. Quiet.

There were hummingbirds, large ones that sounded like helicopters as they hovered in my backyard. Was I that hummingbird, continually moving, only stopping for a second to eat?

When you can’t go out to dinner, you can’t go to people’s houses, and friends can’t come to your home, the only place you can go is inside. And that’s precisely where I went, inside my mind. The scariest place I’ve ever been. Stopping frightened me. On the outside, I appeared strong, but why not on the inside?

I had already experienced and survived my biggest fear with my husband’s death and losing our house. I asked myself over and over, “Am I prepared for this storm? Am I strong enough?”

That’s when it hit me. Trust in yourself. Your strength has been inside you all along. You have it in you to thrive.

If I hadn’t been forced to be quiet, I never would have heard what I needed to hear or learn what I needed to know or take stock of myself. I’m not naïve to think bad things won’t happen again, but now I have the tools to handle them.

Like my garden, it was time to plant seeds and sow a new life for when all this passes and things return to normal.

This pandemic has given me a gift, a second chance. I opened the journal to a clean page and wrote one sentence:

I am present.

The 91-year-old man who is my father is slowly going insane. His conversation is rambling, his ideas are fractured, he is jumping from one subject to another, he is telling me a story he already told me two minutes earlier.

The 91-year-old man who is my father has now been locked down (or do I mean locked up?) for nearly a year. The walls of his two-bedroom flat have become his cell. There is a world outside those walls, but he is afraid to step beyond them – afraid because that world could kill him. He is choosing a prison sentence over a potential death sentence. What a choice.

We had less than 24 hours’ notice that the assisted accommodation where my father has his flat was to lock down and the restaurant to shut. At the local supermarket, I stared in dismay at empty shelves where bread, tissues and toilet roll had sat. But I gratefully collected seven mismatched ready-meals. At the till, the teenage assistant said ready-meals were limited to two-per-shopper. I explained and I begged and the middle-aged woman on the next till leaned over and said, “that’s fine, special circumstances.”

The younger man who was my father lived life to the full. He managed a company, he brought up a family, he had friends, hobbies, a season ticket to Wolverhampton Wanderers, he loved to play cards, he collected stamps, he listened to music, he read books and newspapers.

Today, his stamp albums sit in drawers and his books are in boxes because he can’t concentrate, his music is silent because he can’t work the CD player, his friends can’t visit because they’re also locked down, he is banned from football stadiums and his family is banned from visiting him.

Day after day, the 91-year-old man who is my father looks at the television. He watches quiz contests, he watches sport, he watches antiques shows, he watches the news.

He asks again and again, “How many have died today? I saw it on the news, but I can’t remember. The numbers keep going up.”

It’s all about numbers, 1,000; 10,000; 100,000, like the winnings of one of his quiz games or the football scores. The numbers keep climbing the more we keep guessing. But this isn’t a numbers game – this is a people game. Every one in that 1,000, 10,000, 100,000 is (was?) a human being like the 91-year-old man who is my father. A human being with a name, a face, a personality, a family, friends, hobbies. Did they leave behind a stamp collection, boxes of paperbacks, their favorite CDs, loved ones they hadn’t seen for months?

Television brings faces, people, color and life into the flat of the 91-year-old man who is my father. People talk to him, they share their stories, they play their games with him, they kick their footballs into his lounge. News presenters become his confessors, quiz show hosts his experts, football managers his wisdom. Who could be alone with hundreds of faces on the small screen?

My father is allowed outside so we celebrate his 91^st birthday in the car park. It’s a warm afternoon in May and we sit in two deckchairs, with diet cola and chocolate cake passed over a two-metre space between us. He’s given up wearing a hearing aid and e had the traffic noise means he can’t hear what I say. He has no stories for me to listen to, so we become silent. He soon tires and wants to go back inside, to the safety of his four walls. I wrap up a piece of chocolate cake “for later, or tomorrow” and pack the deckchairs back into the boot.

We have a couple of outings for his hospital appointments. I make him sit in the back of the car “two metres apart, Dad,” and keep the window open, anything to minimize the risk. At the hospital, the floodgates open and he talks to the nurses and doctors in a torrent of words where facts and symptoms become confused with memories, stories and complaints. Still he talks and the kindly staff don’t try to dam the flow, they just allow it to wash around them. They have become used to this.

There is a time for hope. In the summer the prohibition is lifted and this 52-year-old daughter enters her father’s flat after four months of banishment. I find four months of post, piled up and overflowing on the sofa, four months of dust on the mantelpiece, four months of ice built up in the freezer. There has been four months of isolation, desolation and incapacity. In the grip of a depressive listlessness, the 91-year-old man who is my father hasn’t done things. The post, the dust, the ice have sat, like him, immobile in front of the television.

Like the proverbial new broom, I sweep in – dusting, vacuuming, scrubbing, changing dead batteries and light bulbs, sorting post into piles, throwing away out-of-date letters and out-of-date food. Chatting, sharing, filling the flat with action, movement and interaction. But not touch – with gloves and masks we sit on opposite sides of the room and every time the 91-year-old man who is my father tries to approach I back off, keeping the essential two metres between us.

He has other visitors. My 50-year-old brother (whose birthday celebrations have been put on hold) lives nearby and can now pop in. My 54-year-other brother lives ‘Up North’ and drives down to see our father while he can. For a short time, the 91-year-old man who is our father is cheerful and hopeful.

We think the worst is over.

We are wrong.

Again, we have a day’s notice to lockdown but we are old hands at this now and I spend those last few hours doing all I can to lockdown-proof the flat. I teach the 91-year-old man who is my father the purpose of bleach, I update the list of daily medicines, I ensure every letter is in a colour-coded folder.

And now it’s winter and the confinement and the loneliness are even worse to bear. The nights draw in and darkness takes over. Entire days pass when the 91-year-old man who is my father does not see a soul. There are Covid cases at his flats. Lounges, dining areas, communal spaces – all are closed and residents (inmates, as my father calls them) are asked not to visit the office, to phone if they need anything.

There’s the one-day Great Escape when the 91-year-old man who is my father comes to our house for Christmas. We drive past my brother’s home so my father can wave to his grandchildren and they can shout “Happy Christmas Grandpa.” At ours, my 54-year-old husband cooks beef goulash and serves it with a glass of red wine.

“I will never be able to eat all of that,” says the 91-year-old man who is my father. He eats all of it and then asks for Christmas pudding and mince pies.

We open presents.

“You don’t need to buy me anything, I don’t need anything,” my father says. But when he carefully cuts open the gold wrapping paper to reveal new flannel pyjamas, he admits “except pyjamas, mine have seen better days.”

We do Christmas quizzes and the 91-year-old man who is my father can’t remember a single answer.

“I know this one…” he says time and again.

My brother who lives “Up North” telephones to say Happy Christmas. My father tells him: “This is the best day I’ve had all year.”

He doesn’t want to return to his flat. “It’s like a prison,” he says. “It’s so lonely, I don’t see anyone from morning until night.” But he’s too afraid to stay so when the evening comes, I drive him back. “You know you could come here again at New Year if you want,” I say. “I can come and fetch you.” I watch him, hunched over his frame, as the glass doors close behind him.

He decides against coming for New Year, it’s become too dangerous. The numbers of diagnosed and dying are rising again and the 91-year-old man who is my father is frightened again. We telephone on New Year’s Eve. He’s going to bed early, there’s no reason to stay up.

Last year we went to a party at his flats, my father, my husband and me. Residents ate sandwiches and cake, they drank wine and non-alcoholic drinks, they danced in the dining room as a singer performed requests. I asked for Abba and the man on the table next to me wanted Elvis Presley. We all held hands at midnight and sang Auld Lang Syne.

Every evening I speak on the telephone to the 91-year-old man who is my father, but the calls become shorter as he has less and less to say.

“How was today?”

“The same as yesterday, and the day before, and the day before.”

I try to be encouraging.

“Why don’t you try doing a sudoku, or maybe read a book, call one of your friends – that might cheer you up.”

But the next night he’s done none of those things. And the next night, and the next night, and the next.

The 91-year-old man who is my father is slowly going insane. His conversation rambles, his ideas are fractured, he jumps from one subject to another, he tells me a story and begins to tell it again minutes later. I lose the plot of what he’s saying and give up trying to follow, I allow the words to keep coming but I no longer understand what he means. And neither does he.

Sometimes he tells me he can’t carry on, he tells me he’s had enough, he tells me this is worse than prison. He cries.

I’m afraid he will die still locked down. That these terrible twelve months will have been the last year of his life. That after all he did, all he achieved, all the hopes and dreams for his 91 years of life, it will have ended in loneliness, confusion and fear.

He has The Jab; my brother takes him on a Saturday morning to a local gym. There they join hundreds of other elderly and vulnerable men and women on their first step to freedom. But then we learn of a friend who has died despite having the vaccination and we learn of delays for the second jab and we learn the vaccinations may not be wholly successful against the new variants sweeping the country.

The 91-year-old man who is my father is waiting for his flat to come out of lockdown. He is waiting to see human beings face-to-face. He is waiting for visitors. He is waiting to hug people, to kiss people, to touch people.

Although he is so lonely, the 91-year-old man who is my father is not alone. He is one of thousands of 91-year-old men who are fathers, 73-year-old women who are mothers, 86-year-old men and women who are grandparents isolated and desperate. They are dying to see the people they love yet afraid that seeing them will cause them to die. It’s what we value most, human contact, which has become their gravest danger.

This year can never be re-run, this time never be recaptured, this loss will never be forgotten. Those who survive, whatever the number in their age, will carry the trauma. Of babies not held, of aged relatives dying alone, of loved ones separated. We will all bear the scars of our Covid-19 stories.

It’s a land of tundra and toil; sacrifice and secrecy; fallacy and fight. They say Russia is a cold place in more ways than one. It’s no wonder given its tumultuous history. Maybe the cold is a means of survival because, sometimes, being numb is the only way to go on. No one remains unscathed by the sharpness of this world, but some can persevere when they can’t feel their own pain. Maybe that’s why I’ve come to love the cold. In its embrace, there lies peace, an escape from the pain of being ripped away from all I knew.

Many long to numb their pain, to withdraw into blankness, to surrender to an abyss of nothingness. Papa wandered into a welcome oblivion every time he opened a bottle. I swore against alcohol the moment he hit Mama for the first time.

I was born into the mess that was post-Soviet Russia. My name was Anastasia Snezhanova. The name Anastasia means “resurrection.” My surname means “snow.” I like to think of myself as resurrected from the snow.

For the first few years of my life, I found comfort around me. I had Mama, who sought to give me the love Papa couldn’t. But her love alone wasn’t enough to raise me. Our family fell into hardship again and again which forced Mama to bring me to an orphanage.

The first time we went was in winter—February, I think. Behind the snow-covered trees, the yellow building shone brightly, as if to welcome me out of the cold. We were greeted by a woman named Sasha who gave us a tour of the orphanage. Eventually, she led us to an office. I was left to sit in the corridor. I stared curiously at finger paintings on the walls while the adults spoke about the terms of my stay.

“Are the artists of these paintings going to be my friends?” I thought.

Eventually, Mama and Sasha emerged, nodding to each other politely. My fate was sealed. Mama took my hand, bent down in front of me, and said, “I promise I’ll be back for you soon.”

She squeezed me tightly, stood up, and turned away.

“Mama!”

I ran to her, clinging to her thigh. She reached down and cradled my head for a moment before peeling me off her. With clenched fists, I screamed. It echoed through the hall. Neither Mama nor Sasha even blinked. I screamed again and, still, I felt voiceless.

Mama looked at Sasha and sighed. Sasha smiled softly and stepped towards me. I backed away against the wall. My breathing grew heavy. I began to shake. The tears welled up in my eyes until no dam in the world could hold them back.

I sobbed in silence, then, wailed loudly, crying out “no” again and again.

“Asya,” Mama said with a quiet sadness in her voice.

“Mama,” I said. I knew she didn’t want to do this. Four-year-old me couldn’t understand why she was doing it anyways.

I wasn’t worried about being left alone. I could tell I wouldn’t be alone. I heard the muffled voices of children in a room downstairs. Instead, I was worried about Mama. She would return home where Papa would stumble home from the bar and unleash his anger on her day after day. And I wouldn’t be there. She would be alone.

“Asya, please,” she pleaded. “We talked about this. I’ll be back soon, moya snezhinka.”

“Moya snezhinka,” she called me. “My snowflake.”

In a low voice, she uttered the words, “I promise.”

I wiped my tears away and reached for her once more. She hugged me again and kissed my forehead.

“I love you,” she whispered.

“I love you too, Mama.”

Then, she nodded to Sasha and said good-bye. Without another word, she walked down the stairs. I followed behind her and stopped at the bottom. She continued down the corridor to the entrance of the building. Still sobbing uncontrollably, I watched her open the door, step out, and disappear from view.

The days went by. I made friends. I stayed busy.

At the orphanage, my friends and I were given quite a lot of freedom and we took even more. We thought of ourselves as wild and wily rebels even though our escapades were innocent enough. On many nights, we snuck down to the kitchen and ate spoonfuls of honey. It felt right to share childhood. I hadn’t had a brother or sister at home. The orphanage blurred the line between friends and family.

The days turned into weeks. The weeks turned into months.

One early spring day, I was playing out in the yard when I saw her. She looked exactly the same except for her belly which was big and round.

“Asya!”

I ran out of the fenced-in yard and fell into her arms.

“Oh, my goodness! You’re all grown up, moya snezhinka!”

“Mama, why is your belly so big?”

“You’re going to have a little sister, Asya. Papa and I want you home with us.”

I stayed home all summer. Papa didn’t drink as much. He was often agitated but he had work that kept him busy. When he wasn’t home, Mama was at her happiest. She glowed with each day that passed. She told me about all the things we would do together—my little sister, Mama, and I.

A week before my fifth birthday, Mama said, “Asya, for your birthday, you can choose your new sister’s name.”

I thought of a graceful figure skater named Yelena. At the orphanage, my friends and I used to crowd around the TV to admire her.

“Yelena!” I exclaimed.

“Mmm… It means ‘sun,’” she explained. “Moya snezhinka and moye solntse!”

Two weeks after my birthday, Mama and Papa went to the hospital. I was left with an old lady in our building. The next evening, they returned. Papa said nothing when he picked me up. With a vacant look, he brought me upstairs to our apartment.

I couldn’t wait to meet Yelena. I burst through the door, tripping over the threshold in my excitement. I fell down hard and began to cry. Papa lifted me up and patted me on the head. It was a rare display of affection. Soon, I stopped crying and looked around eagerly.

Inside, it was dark. I could barely see Mama sitting on our old sofa in the corner. She said nothing. She didn’t even look at me. I ran to her.

“Mama! Where is Yelena? Where is my sister?”

I ran into the bedroom. No one was there.

“Where is she? Mama!”

“She’s not here, Anastasia,” Papa said without a trace of emotion.

“Where is she? When is she coming here?”

“She’s not coming,” he said.

“Why not?”

He never answered. He walked to a cabinet from which he retrieved a large bottle. He removed the cap, took a swig, and went into the bedroom, slamming the door.

Mama remained silent. I went to her. I climbed onto the sofa and towards her lap. She pushed me to the floor. I tried again. This time, she stood up and went into the bathroom, locking the door behind her.

I sat on the floor next to the door. I heard her crying. I cried too.

For hours, I sat alone in the living room until I fell asleep.

The next day, I woke up in my little bed. I slept in the living room, under the window. Mama and Papa were nowhere to be seen. Their bedroom door was closed.

I waited all morning. At last, the front door opened and Papa stumbled in, carrying a large bottle in each hand and another under his right arm. He brought home and emptied three bottles each day for the next month. He didn’t hit Mama anymore. Instead, he fell on the floor and went to sleep before he had the chance to hurt her.

Once a week, he brought something sweet for me. This was new. Before then, Mama had repeatedly said we didn’t have the money for such things. Somehow, Papa found a way. Maybe he felt bad for his behavior.

The sweets did little to lift my spirits. I found myself missing my friends. At home, I felt more alone than ever. Mama still said nothing. She spent most of the day in her room. Many times, I heard her crying.

The next winter came and Papa was without work. He stopped bringing sweets. Instead of three bottles, he brought only one. It wasn’t enough to make him sleep. He started to hit Mama. They sent me to the old lady downstairs more often.

Over the next two years, I was brought to the orphanage five times. The last time was in September, 1999.

As she had done every other time before, Mama said, “I’ll be back soon.”

She never came back.

As the days grew colder, so did I. My tears stopped flowing. They remained frozen. Perhaps I even wanted time itself to freeze as it was forcing me farther from Mama with each passing day. Somehow, I knew she wasn’t coming back.

A week before Christmas, Sasha, the woman from the orphanage, brought me to her office where there were three strangers. One of them—a pretty lady—began to speak. I didn’t recognize her words. There was a man holding her hand who had bronze skin with dark hair and eyes.

Beaming, Sasha said, “These are your new parents, Asya!”

The third person, a pale lady with raven black hair, stepped forward.

“Hello, Asya! I’m Tatyana. Your new parents don’t speak Russian. I’m here to help. They’ve come to take you to America!”

“Where is that?”

“It’s far away from here. You’ll have to fly in an airplane to get there!”

“Okay…” I said, hesitantly. “When will I come back?”

Sasha sighed and said, “Asya, you’re going to live there. You’re going to have a new family and new friends.”

I’m sure my face looked puzzled.

The pretty lady bent down, looked directly into my eyes, and spoke.

“We know it sounds a bit scary, Asya,” Tatyana echoed her in Russian. “But we want to give you the very best life. We want you to be happy. And we will do everything we can to make that happen.”

Looking back into the pretty lady’s eyes, I felt an instinct—a need—to trust her. I made up my mind to give in and I’ve never regretted that decision. Not when I nervously boarded an airplane for the first time in my life. Not when I watched my homeland shrink below as we flew high into the sky. Not when I stepped off the airplane and heard every language except my own.

The day I arrived was a white Christmas Eve. I knew only three words in English: “hello” and “thank you.”

My new parents led me into a house and upstairs where I met many people who hugged me and smiled.

A few minutes later, the pretty lady grabbed my hand and said, “We have a surprise.”

“‘Syurpriz’?” I repeated. She nodded happily.

At that moment, everyone turned to look at the stairs. I heard voices coming closer. A little girl with sun-kissed hair appeared.

When she saw the pretty lady, the little girl cried, “Mommy!”

She took one step forward before tripping and falling on the floor. At once, she began crying and the man with the bronze skin ran to sweep her up in his arms. He put her down in front of me.

“Ana,” he said to me, “This is your sister, Laura.”

Seeing her up close, my heart nearly stopped. Then, she smiled and I cried.

The sun shone and the snowflake thawed.

“Quick, the cord’s wrapped around her neck. Twice!”

I remember my numb feet in the stirrups. I remember the nurses on either side of me. I remember seeing my baby’s little purple head in the mirror, cone-shaped and strange. The doctor’s hand whirred around it in two circles, concise and quick. But I felt nothing.

“One more push, this is the biggest push!”

Two and a half hours into pushing, and I still don’t know how to push, I thought frustratedly. I tried as best as I could, my teeth crushing each other with determined force, my hands in knotted fists by my ribs. Out! She’s out!

Relief swirled through my exhausted, stretched body. There she was, in their hands, in the mirror. Then on my chest.

My daughter. Katie.

Her pale purple fingers were the first things I could see clearly. They curled and uncurled against my skin, unsure, new. A wet cry joined my panting breaths.

I was always told that a special part of your heart would open up when you held your child for the first time. I had imagined it so many times throughout my pregnancy. I knew just how it would be; they would hand her to me, and it would feel like sparkling, golden honey had flooded my soul as my eyes drank in every delicate feature of her face. 

But here I was, staring at her tiny fingers in shock and confusion instead. This isn’t my baby. Where is the one that lived and hiccuped and kicked in my womb? Surely this isn’t her. It can’t be. There are no sparkles in my heart. Just this strange child on my chest. Purple, alien-esque. And those fingers. Purple. Unfamiliar.

Then she started to slip off of me, and my arms were shaking so badly from the epidural that I couldn’t grasp her well. Her naked rump landed on the bed and I apologized, sorry, sorry! I don’t know what I’m doing. Where is my real baby, where is she?

I glanced desperately at my husband. He was sitting slightly behind me to my right. His face was pale, his gaze distant. He had seen the basins of blood the nurses were taking away. The doctor offered him the scissors to cut the umbilical cord. “No, no,” he said. He had already told the doctor he didn’t want to cut it, but she wanted to give him the chance. “No.” His hands covered his nose in a tent and he slammed his eyes shut, blocking out the images.

So the doctor offered me the scissors. I would’ve laughed if I had the energy; my fitfully shaking arms could barely hold my newborn, much less a sharp object. “Please, cut it yourself,” I muttered, exhausted. “I can’t.”

I can’t. How could I muster the strength to care for this child? How could I even love this child when she felt like a total stranger to me, her own mother? Everything was wrong, so wrong… I closed my eyes and exhaled slowly. They had all lied. They lied about everything and I feel worlds away from my own baby, even my own husband. I felt panic start to prickle in my stomach. Perhaps I was in shock, I’ll never know. I handed the baby girl to a nurse, feeling dazed and alarmed at the emptiness in my chest.

I can’t do this.

The words would drift through my mind many times throughout the next few weeks like a cold, gray breeze. They would chill me to the core, and I’d wrap my fuzzy purple robe tighter around myself to stave it off. “Being a mother is the most natural thing in the world,” they had told me. Oh, but it feels so unnatural! Please help me, God! The tears would squeeze out from my clenched eyelids, falling gently on my baby’s swaddle in the dark. I’d try one more time to get Katie to latch for breastfeeding, only to have my toes curl in pain against the flattened rug. I can’t. Not one more time can I do this.

It was then just past two in the morning. I got up twice more that night to nurse her. I gasped in pain, curled my toes, and rocked back and forth to soothe us both. Back and forth. Back and forth. Please God, help me. Take my pain away. Give me strength. Help my baby. Back and forth.

They called them the “baby blues.” I thought of them as the “baby grays,” because the days were gray and the nights were darker gray. I felt as though I were feeling my way through a heavy fog; it filled my lungs with its oppressive weight and made it hard to breathe at times. But I kept feeling and forging on, one day at a time, one hour at a time. There was no other choice. I felt duty-bound to my daughter.

Yet mercifully—out of that horrible, stark grayness—glimmers of light began to beam. Little moments, like tiny fireflies, glowed gently among the struggle-filled weeks.

I held Katie against my shoulder. Her panting was pleasant against my neck, warm and rapid. Her eyelids flickered. Baby dreams. Downy, blond hair tickled my cheek and her tiny hand jerked in a startled reflex. I was touched to see her smooth skin, her plump pink cheeks, her rosebud lips, and know that they were created inside of me.

Then there was my own body. The skin on my belly draped like a loose curtain. My under-eyes were sunken and purplish. Angry stretch marks streaked across a large portion of my body. Sometimes I would see myself in the mirror and think, I’m only twenty-two years old. Should I have waited? What have I given up?

Then I would see her, my beautiful child sleeping blissfully in her crib. I had exchanged my smooth skin for hers. I gave up rest and ease so that she could enjoy both of them. I sacrificed my body’s youthful form to stretch and bulge and itch and creak, all in the hope of granting Katie her chance at life.

During the lonely nighttime feedings, I would ponder how a daughter is not only created in her mother, but from her mother. And that sense of giving, that feeling of servanthood and sacrifice, became sacred to me. I felt as though I had wandered into a humbling sisterhood of billions of women, not really knowing what to expect. Did any of us understand what we were taking on when we felt that gentle stirring in our wombs? But here we were anyway. We were all trying. We were all grappling with this heavy and holy work of raising our children.

That invisible bond pulled me to other women: my mother, my sisters, my mother-in-law, my friends. Drawing from their experiences, their hardships, and their successes was like sipping a warm, soothing beverage for a sore throat. I wasn’t alone in this wrestle. We all had long days that had dissolved into evening tears. We laughed until our bellies ached from the funny stories our children provided. Our hearts had swollen at the sight of our precious children, smiling their crooked smiles and giggling their throaty giggles.

I learned that it might take a village to raise a child, but it also takes a village to raise the mother of that child. These women listened to me, they gave advice, they brought meals, they donated clothes, they babysat, and they mentored me. But their various examples were also crucial. I saw how these women hadn’t just accepted their roles; they had grown into them and flourished. I saw that I could do it, too.

As with any growth, though, it would take time. Like my daughter, I was in an unfamiliar infancy—trying to figure out how to gain control of myself, how to form a bond, how to communicate with another being that didn’t speak the same language. We really weren’t that different; I was merely further along on the same path. That perspective helped me develop patience through the exhausting nights and the drawn-out days. Each hour held another lesson. I kept trying to figure out what a specific cry meant, then how to coax a gummy grin out of Katie, and eventually how much pear purée she could comfortably stomach. She kept learning how to get my attention or tell me that she didn’t like having her hair washed. And so we grew and learned together.

My newborn mother-self slowly developed until I was metaphorically toddling along. After five months of having a baby, I finally felt like I had my feet under me. I was confident that I could care for Katie and meet her needs. But like any toddler, I had my stumbles. What do I do when she has a fever? How do I care for her eczema? Oh no, she whacked her head on the bookshelf, how could I have let this happen? Thankfully, my husband was there to assist and calm me in such moments of insecurity. We had made it this far, hadn’t we? We could continue to figure it out.

One of my biggest growing moments occurred when my husband was away for military training. I was at home with my eight-month-old, and the monster Hurricane Michael was bearing down on the Florida Panhandle. It was predicted to make landfall an hour east of our home. My husband and I hadn’t been able to communicate due to strict regulations, so I couldn’t update him on the potential danger I faced. I felt extremely alone and anxious as I debated whether to leave or stay.

Finally, I held my crying daughter in one arm and raced from room to room with my phone in the other hand, taking videos of our home and possessions in case we needed them for insurance purposes. My heart beat wildly as I threw clothes, formula, and other necessities into a suitcase. I grabbed our cardboard “Important Docs Box” and threw it in the trunk.

We were leaving. There was no time to keep debating about an evacuation. I prayed silently as I buckled Katie into her carseat. Please protect my home, Heavenly Father. Keep us safe on the roads.

I might have stayed if it were just me at the house. But with my child, it was different. I alone was in charge of her safety. The responsibility weighed heavily on my heart as we drove from our home to Baton Rouge. My husband would understand the cost of a hotel for a couple of nights.

I stopped at a gas station halfway to our destination. Again, I held my whimpering baby in one arm. With the other, I filled a paper cup with hot water from a coffee machine to warm Katie’s formula. I was so distracted that the scalding water overflowed onto my hand. I angrily dropped the cup and gritted my teeth, blowing on my burned skin to cool it down.

My startled baby had stopped crying and was staring at me in confusion. Oh, my precious girl. She has no idea why we’re here in a gas station, why I’m getting hot water, why we’re leaving our home. Looking into Katie’s concerned blue eyes, the burning sensation slowly lessened and I suddenly felt grateful. To spare her from worry or fear, I had taken the leap to evacuate. That thought filled me with peace. Sometimes the best antidote for fear is to simply make a decision and follow through, and I was proud that I had done that, even in my frazzled state.

The strength to make my decision came out of necessity. I couldn’t talk to my husband about our options. I had to weigh them myself and decide on a course of action in a short amount of time. The pressure helped streamline my thoughts and clear my vision. I didn’t realize my own ability until I was forced to look it square in the face and ask myself what I was willing to do to protect my child. So there I stood in a middle-of-nowhere gas station with a burned hand, a tear-stained baby on my hip, and a calmness in my heart. I felt as if I had grown three inches in the last few hours. While the process was nerve-wracking and soul-stretching, I could stand a little taller.

I refilled the cup—more carefully, this time—and warmed Katie’s bottle. We got back on the road fifteen minutes later and arrived safely in Baton Rouge. Our home ended up being safe, and my husband and I were able to talk about the situation a couple of days later. Things were good, and I was a more developed person because of the setbacks I had faced.

Now, my daughter is freshly two years old. A few days ago, she ran around our living room in delight, herding purple balloons into a huddled mass. “It’s been two whole years since the morning we held our newborn in that hospital room,” I stated, looking over at my husband. Katie squealed and tossed a balloon in the air between us.

My husband shook his head and tented his hands over his nose, the same way he had in the hospital. “Ugh,” he muttered. Then he lifted his head. “It’s so much better now. So much better.” After a small pause, he added, “I do love her. I do love my little girl.”

I smiled in agreement. “I love her, too.” I got on my hands and knees and chased Katie through the balloons, and her joyous giggles filled the room.

There was that sparkling honey again. That same love that I had felt many times in the last two years flooded my chest, warm and soothing and sweet. I gazed adoringly at my beautiful daughter in a way that I used to think wasn’t possible. I had changed. I had been refined. I had grown into motherhood. And in that agonizing, hand-reaching, soul-rending, prayer-filled growth, I had found the most beautiful love for my Katie.

I have experienced many external and internal challenges in my life. But none of them amount to the transformation I’ve had in learning how to love and serve a little being that is my very own. To love is to serve, and to serve is to sacrifice. To sacrifice pride, comfort, ease, sleep, time, peace, and your very body is a sacrifice that all mothers make, and I’m now bearing that staggering and magnificent weight myself. The weight strengthens me each day, and I am able to press on stronger and more capable the next day—because I am a mother, and I love my child as only a mother can.

Following thirteen months behind my only sibling’s academic footsteps was hard. From elementary school on, she was a glowing student; absorbing, digesting, and understanding information seemingly by osmosis. She maintained straight A’s throughout her academic career and earned a college scholarship. I, on the other hand, struggled to maintain a C average and ran away from home at the age of fifteen.

Let’s take a moment and rewind…

I thought I was stupid. Compared to my sister, it certainly appeared that way. However, it wasn’t until many years later I discovered that I learn differently from how I was being taught.

There are three recognized learning styles:

• Auditory learners grasp things by hearing—the worst type of test for them involves reading passages and writing answers. They’re best at writing responses to lectures they’ve heard, and are also good at oral exams.
• Visual learners comprehend through seeing—the worst test type for them includes having to listen and respond. They’re best at diagramming, reading maps, essays (if they’ve studied using an outline), and showing a process.
• Tactile (kinesthetic) learners understand through experiencing/doing—the worst test type for them usually has lengthy tests and essays. They’re best at short definitions, fill in the blanks, and multiple choice.

When I was in school, the general teaching population were auditory teachers. A heavily tactile learner—with a smidgen of visual thrown in for good measure—I was missing the boat!

Fast forward…

Not having done any planning before running away, I didn’t know that if you leave high school before you graduate, you can’t test for a GED—General Education Diploma—until two years after your graduating class.

Biding my time, I went to work for a large, everything-under-one-roof store. Over the next few years I worked my way up to managing the women’s wear department, then added men’s wear, and topped it off with housewares and furniture.

I gained valuable life experience during that window of time. Part of this seat-of-the-pants wisdom was learning to say, “I don’t understand. Can you please explain that differently?” And that’s when I noticed that no matter how many times someone “told” me, it wasn’t until they “showed” me that I got it! When shown, I not only met, but exceeded what was expected of me.

I left high school as a sophomore in 1973. For four long years I waited and prepared to take the GED examination. On a hot day in late June of 1977, with the cut-grass tang of summer in the air, I slipped into a front row seat at the testing center; one of about twenty other people enveloped in the sterile classroom setting.

The all-day test was given in seven parts: Language Arts (writing), Language Arts (reading), Social Studies, Science, Math (calculator allowed), Math (calculator not allowed), and United States Constitution.

Hours later—head held high with a face-splitting grin—I left the facility with every confidence that I’d aced the test. Six weeks later I received my GED certificate, and that was just the beginning. Over time I earned my associate degree, then bachelor’s, followed by a master’s degree. Finally, two weeks before my fiftieth birthday, I sat and defended my Ph.D. thesis.

Hard-wired for buoyancy and tenacious as a terrier, when I set my mind on something I go after it with tremendous resolve. It took a while, but I eventually went from GED to Ph.D. And while I’m Ph.inisheD with brick-and-mortar academia, I’ll never be done learning.

– Hello grandma, how is everything?

– Oh, my dear Seyma, is that you? Since you are calling all the way from America I will not waste much. I am doing well, take good care of yourself and never forget to put aside your charity before Friday prayer every week.

– Sure, grandma, is there anything you ask of me?

– Tell me, if I were to come to collect donations for the orphans in my town, would President Clinton give me any?

– My dearest grandma, you ask this all the time; I am in America, but I really do not meet with President Clinton at all. I am an ordinary college student and he does not roam around the streets.

I then wondered and chuckled, “the audacity to ask the President of the States when you live far away in a rural part of Anatolia!”

***

All of our cousins, aunts, and uncles would gather in her large but simple 4-bedroom home every Eid. Sugar-loaded grandkids would look for trouble and would find money at every corner of the giant hand-woven rug, to which she anxiously warned: “This sac of money belongs to the fridge project for Ms. Aisha; the right corner belongs to the school supplies for Ms. Khadija’s daughters; and the red sack has the money for Ms. Fatima’s house project. Do not even touch, my dears, as these are sacred.”

She built dozens of houses with the funds that she collected bit by bit, day by day, cent by cent and would store it under the rug. She would never let a family go without fulfilling all of their needs and finding a sustainable source of income. A couple days a week, she would take the needy families down to the marketplace to visit businessmen and ask for help. Some of them knew of her sincere intentions while others complained when she arrived. However, she certainly did not care what others would think of her. She would be helping a family or two and they would sit around the table with all of us every Eid dinner. My uncles and aunts were the “elites” of the town, and so this notion was not something we were used to in our normal lives. I then grunted for her absurdness for squeezing us all with strangers.

***

She used to sit down on her old velvet couch with her green thousand-count prayer beads in her hands as she looked out the window and lamented why the municipality would turn on the light at 5:30 pm when it gets dark only slightly later. If she saw an unnecessarily lit area, no matter how tired she was and what time of the day it was, she would hastily run to turn them off despite her old age and swollen legs.

The most striking part of the story used to come when she turned the lights off when my grandfather was in the bathroom. It was typical in most houses to have light switches outside of the room. When he screamed for her to turn the light back on, she, with a great sense of humor and seriousness, shouted back “Get done and come out quickly, there is nothing to see there anyhow!”

The most memorable quote from her was the Qur’anic verse, “…eat and drink, but waste not by excess, for God does not love wasters” (7:31).

I thought she was exaggerating this a bit much.

***

– Granny, I have exams this week. Can you please pray for me?

– Oh, my sweetie, may God help all those in need including you. I will pray for everyone, God willing.

– No grandma, that is NOT what I want. I want you to pray for ME!

With a smile, she would embrace and kiss me on the head.

I was then heart-broken thinking that I wasn’t special to her.

***

Her first name was Ihsaniye, which means “the bestowed.” She met with her Beloved God on a Feb 14^th after a long battle with a heinous cancer. The whole town cried – and, I thought I even heard the sky cry – with chants of her nickname, “the Mother of Orphans.”

Now, I have your hand-woven blue-beige medallion-style wool rug, which was the container of your little sacks, maroon-ruby wedding ring, and your green thousand-count prayer beads in my hands to cherish your beautiful heart and soul, the giant heart to fit all of humanity, the soul that cared for the earth…

As I sip my dark and warm coffee in this light and spacious hall, in one of the country’s most sustainable buildings, Kroon Hall in New Haven, listening to professors, NGOs, and private sectors presenting their vision, solutions, and efforts on Climate Change, Sustainability, and Economic Empowerment, I sigh deeply, and remember the Mother of Orphans, my dearest grandmother.

As I wheeled Chris off the elevator, he was quieter than the day before, definitely not in the mood for pranks. He didn’t complain—my husband never complained—yet he clearly wasn’t feeling as well.

Two steps forward, one step back: that still qualified as progress.

Rolling through the hospital hallways, following signs for Radiology, we passed several women wearing nasal cannulas and pulling oxygen-cylinder carts. The sight wasn’t remarkable in that the National Institutes of Health runs clinical trials on virtually every ailment—from the common to the rare, the treatable to the terminal. What was surprising was seeing a cohort of patients similarly afflicted, all female and relatively young.

At least they were ambulatory. When Chris’s doctor ordered a scan this morning, his nurse ordered a wheelchair.

During his first few days after readmission, Chris’s condition fell somewhere between depleted and God-awful depending on the degree of his sawtoothing fever. As his treatments—withdrawal of anti-rejection meds included—began to take effect, however, I’d sometimes arrive to find him sitting up in bed, looking comfortable and alert, like a patient soon to be released.

Towards the end of the week, his humor kicked in. After opening a colleague’s get-well card to find a droll reference to their firm’s new management—a buyout of the Rouse Company was but two weeks away—Chris reached for the bedside phone. When a recording advised him to leave a message, he deepened his voice and pretended to be the CEO. “This is John B—,” he said gruffly. “It’s come to my attention that you have a poor attitude about the merger.”

To me, the spoof was proof of recovery. To his friend, who didn’t recognize Chris in disguise, it was cause to call the head of security: Someone was impersonating the chief executive.

Come Friday, Chris remained frail despite signs of improvement. His nurse took me up on my offer to drive him to his appointment.

In the Radiology waiting room, we found two more women on oxygen therapy. After positioning Chris at the end of a row of seats, I took the one beside him. If silence had been a preference en route, now it was a prescription. No one spoke or made eye contact. No one leafed through magazines, for there were none. No one asked the time or glanced at their watch. It was as if chronic illness had instilled a monkish composure. Or torpor.

I was the only non-patient in the room, the Lucky One. As the others sat alone with their thoughts, I wondered what those might be. That three back-to-back tests followed? That with sick leave exhausted, the boss had to be told? That scrambled eggs might stay down? That last time the shadow had shrunk, so this time, well, don’t get too hopeful?

Or were they trying to avoid thinking, instead imagining doing something—anything—more agreeable? Strolling through the hill town of Assisi. Watching a Coen brothers film. Defending an IRS audit.

One of the women on oxygen finally had enough. Silence wasn’t a chance to grab a shot of mindfulness; silence was a looming endgame. By talking, she could ward off quietus. But she needed a partner.

“What brings you here?” she asked me, in a tone so warm and genuine that she might have been a greeter in a small-town visitors bureau.

She looked about forty, or a little older, but it was hard to tell; illness can age a person faster than a Broadway makeup artist. Although her appearance was middling in every respect—from her height and build to her facial features and shade of brown hair—her spirit was striking. Whether the vivacity was innate or cultivated for survival, she offered me what she desperately needed: a deep breath of fresh air.

“My husband needs an X-ray.” I glanced at Chris. He showed no sign of wanting to engage. Under the circumstances, it felt unfriendly, even hurtful, to not offer more. “He had a kidney transplant a few months ago,” I added. “Now he has mono.”

Immediately, another patient stood and left. Perhaps she went to the restroom, or realized she’d left her purse in the car. More likely, mononucleosis spooked her—even though it’s not an airborne infection.

I paused, realizing that my interlocutor might want to leave, too. She didn’t budge. “How about you?” I asked. In deference to patient privacy, I avoided the politeness of trading names.

“I need a double-lung transplant. There’s a group of us here who have the same disease. We get together every year.” She chuckled. “It’s like a reunion!”

Lymphangioleiomyomatosis, or LAM, is a rare condition that primarily affects women ages twenty to forty. Abnormal cells invade the lungs, as well as lymph nodes and kidneys, leading to reduced pulmonary function and respiratory failure. Treatments, including transplantation, can enhance the quality and duration of life but the disease is incurable. After diagnosis, life expectancy is usually ten to twenty years.[1]

Her disclosure was stunning. Not long ago, I wouldn’t have grasped the challenges she faced, merely to delay the inevitable. No longer.

One day she would lie in an OR, as we recently had. But unlike Chris, whose kidneys were allowed to fail in place, with one of mine nested beneath them, she would have both lungs removed to accommodate her grafts. No matter how damaged and inadequate, those lungs were infusing her blood with oxygen, ridding it of carbon dioxide, maintaining life. Temporarily, she might require a heart-lung machine and a ventilator; ultimately, she’d either breathe though the new air sacs or wouldn’t . . . breathe. If her grafts failed, there was no recourse like dialysis to sustain her.

In short, she would perform a death-defying, net-free launch from a trapeze with no turning back once she let go of the fly bar. Her odds of surviving even five years after transplantation were not much better than one in two.[2]

And that was if she got lucky. With the chronic shortage of deceased-donor organs, lungs might not become available in time. Although living donation was possible, she’d need two Good Samaritans, each providing the lower lobe of a lung.^⁠ They’d face a riskier surgery and longer recovery than kidney donors, which meant friends and relatives were less likely to volunteer.

A radiology assistant called Chris’s name. Together, they disappeared through a door leading to the imaging machines. Moments later, the woman was called, as well.

She’d shared no details about her personal life. She’d only spoken of her illness, which, understandably, had come to define her—from what lung-healthy products she could buy to how she should dress, walk, or perform daily chores, such as unpacking groceries, to minimize exertion. If she seemed compelled to tell me she had LAM, it was not because she sought sympathy; she struck me as someone devoid of self-pity. What she wanted was to be heard. To be heard is to be remembered.

In no time, Chris was back and we were retracing our route through the cold fluorescence of the corridors. As we entered an empty elevator, he said, “You shouldn’t have mentioned I have mono.”

“Why?”

“You saw the woman leave.”

“But she had a right to know. I’d want to know.”

I hadn’t meant to embarrass him. For that I was sorry. But I was as disappointed in him as he was in me. Chris was still “chesting” his health cards, as if this were a hand of bridge, with nothing but his pride at stake.

No doubt a gender difference was at work, a primal XY-chromosome trait, which he’d exhibited many times before: Never show weakness lest a contender seize the advantage—be that your mate, your kill, or your year-end bonus. According to such logic, illness fell between failing and fatal flaw.

A strategy suitable for the savanna or a boardroom, however, is counterproductive in a medical setting where any debility you don’t reveal is one that isn’t treated. The woman I’d just met understood the importance of communication, on every front, regarding her health. I was sorry that my husband didn’t.

And hadn’t.

At the same time, I was grateful. As we made our way back to his room, my mind unspooled a skein of “at leasts.” At least he isn’t suffocating to death. At least he can fall back on dialysis. At least he isn’t alone while undergoing treatment. At least his graft shows no sign of rejection. At least I haven’t had to kiss him goodbye outside an OR and wonder if he would return. At least both of us were able to presume we would return.

Counting blessings was my luxury, not Chris’s. Sick as hell, he was entitled to feel however he felt, unthankful included, with no obligation to parse his advantages relative to others.

Later that night, Chris’s doctor called me at home. He’d had Chris moved to intensive care. He spoke so calmly and matter-of-factly that I didn’t panic. In fact, the thought never occurred to me that every “at least” would soon count for nothing.

[1] National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, “Health Topics: LAM,” http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/health-topics/topics/lam (accessed February 1, 2019).

[2] Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network, “National Data: Lung Kaplan-Meier Patient Survival Rates For Transplants Performed, 2008 – 2015; Survival by Single vs. Double Lung (Lung Only),” https://optn.transplant.hrsa.gov/data/view-data-reports/national-data/# (accessed February 2, 2019).