05.26.2021

The small cardboard box that held Mila's ashes sat in the funeral home for months. Every day I thought about it, but I couldn't find the strength to pick it up. When I imagined holding it, feeling the weight of it, I struggled to breathe. Until I met an artist, a mother who lost her son to a rare disease, and faces the possibility of losing her other two children to the same condition. Someone had connected us, and she offered to make Mila's urn with love. I sat in my parked car on a cold, rainy evening and cried on the phone as I told her stories of my Mila bug. She listened, her gentle voice telling me she understood. Over the next month, she incorporated nature, color and music into the piece. She heard my uneasiness with the sharp corners of a manufactured box, and instead found a round gourd and cleaned it. She came up with drawings of hummingbirds, played with colors, and found a hand-blown marble for the lid. She removed a string from her daughter's violin and wrapped it around the base. And when it was ready, she drove down from her house in the Colorado mountains to meet me, we hugged tightly, and she handed me the small beautiful gourd which she had poured so much love into. I placed my hands around it and held it to my womb.

05.18.2021

There are days when it's hard to remember who I was before Mila. When I think of what it means to be happy, to feel joy, pain, love, I think of the last ten years. But there are other days when I think back through the movie reel of my life and Mila seems to have simply come and gone. Just like that. Like a sun that rose high in the morning sky, shone brightly and warmly on the world around her, and then quietly set over the mountains.

05.11.2021

The movement of life is slowly returning to our home. Azlan's pod school friends sit down for lunch and tell jokes, then jump up and run loudly around the room. But the energy in our house is different. Since last summer, Mila had sat quietly in her chair. No words, no vision, little to no movement. But only now do I understand how strong Mila’s presence really was. Today, I see the busyness, but feel the emptiness.

05.04.2021

Before Mila died, I imagined what grieving might look like. I couldn't know what emotions I would face, but I pictured the comfort of space and time around me. I had forgotten to consider that somehow I still needed to be a mom to my six-year-old who lost his sister. As my body weakened with grief, I found it difficult even to lift a glass of water to my own mouth. But Azlan needed me more than ever to listen to his stories, to chase after him around our house, to make him dinner, to hold him tightly when he screamed and fought back. I still struggle to hold myself up while at the same time holding up my son. But every day is a new day, and we're slowly finding our way through this together.