Loss

" I feel like I became an orphan today. After I heard the news my body felt empty for about an hour." 

I've traveled a lot this year and taken more Ubers than I can count, but there is a particular Uber ride that stays with me for some reason. I think he was Lebanese, this man who was bringing me back from the airport to my apartment for the fifth time this year or something (at this point, I've lost count).

He was telling me about how difficult it is to be an immigrant father, happy for his now grown-up and settled adult children, but heartbroken that he hasn't been able to visit home in over a decade.

It's fitting that I've been nursing a canker sore on my tongue for the past three days, and can barely talk. In every way, I have legitimately lost all of my words. I don't know what to say and it sucks. I have heard my father cry only once before, and that was when his father died in India about 20 years ago. I don't know what to say this time and it really really sucks.

I was young enough when my grandfather died, for it to have been okay that I had nothing to say. But now I am old enough and in the position to have something to say. But why does nothing come out of my mouth when I open it.

I don't understand how her pneumonia spread, I don't understand how she was discharged from the hospital, and was fine for several days and then found to have severe thrombocytopenia, and failing kidneys

I don't understand what happened. How could I possibly, here in the comfort of my apartment sitting several miles and bodies of water away from her. How could I possibly forgive myself for not going to India for the ENTIREITY of my graduate training, not one summer, not one break

I sacrificed so much, forgetting how much they sacrificed for me

I don't understand where my grief is, where I've locked it away and why nothing comes out when I open my mouth

I dont know why I am so exhausted even though I haven't cried as much as I thought I would have. 

He said that this time, he was thankful that he had just recently visited, and done Ganesh puja with her the proper way, and that she smiled and she was happy to see him

He said that he cooked for her, and that she was very impressed and told everyone how amazing his cooking was

But there is still sadness in his voice, and I heard him cry again on the phone

And that's what kills me the most

It's killing me that I can't do anything to remove his pain. 

For my whole life, he held me and cradled me and did everything he could to remove my pain. I was really scared of the dark as a child, and he'd tuck me in bed and turn out the lights and walk to his room and I'd call out in the middle of the night. "Daddy! Daddy please"
And he'd come, bleary-eyed, tired 
But he always came
He said the right things, he said everything was going to be okay, and that I am going to be okay

And to this day, he always always holds me when I am sad and when I am breaking

so why can't I do the same

What does it mean to be a good daughter? I've been so focused at how terrible I'll be as a mother that I've forgotten that I'm not the greatest daughter either.

What do I say

Usually in these situations I just fall off the planet and wait it out a little bit and re-emerge

but I can't do that

Dr. M told me that sometimes families are distressed by the "death rattle" so she usually has everyone step outside before palliative extubation. I watched Mrs. D's family walk back in after it was over, and they all had tears in their eyes. One of her sons held her hand and apologized for not telling her enough that he loved her. He repeated over and over again that he loved her.

Mrs. D's husband rubbed his hand over hers, and kept talking to her in a low voice. I never saw him actually cry. He was busy trying to make sure all the kids were there, busy trying to make sure all the arrangements had been arranged and I didn't know it was because he didn't want to arrange his own thoughts

I wish I knew more about Shankarajji. I wish I knew more about her life as a young teenager giving birth for the first time, as a young woman raising four incredibly wonderful boys into incredibly wonderful men. I wish I knew if she was proud of me.

a doctor. I'm going to be a doctor. and I had told her that I would come back as one. And I will go back.

but she won't be there.