Grief Fragments is a raw, ongoing diary about being by my mother’s side as she faces terminal cancer. It is an attempt to process—and survive—grief in real-time, to stay connected to life in the midst of death, to write the unspeakable, to bear the unbearable, and to record the final months, weeks, and days I have left with my mother. I am writing for my life.
May 24, 2025
In the end, everything becomes memory.
Why write these words when they seem so insubstantial compared to what I am living and feeling? What else do I have?
It's hard to be around her sometimes. I feel such a pain in my chest.
We walk through life, blind and unknowing. We can't predict how each choice leads to some ultimate horror. How did her life lead to this? How can it end this way?
Life continues all around me. She is dying, and life goes on. That's the worst truth there is. Your world ends, and no one takes any notice.
Why was I born? Why was I created only to watch the two people I love most be taken from me?
These words are my screams.
Her strength overwhelms me. I've watched her endure so much pain. I think she holds on because of me. She always lived for me—we lived for each other. It took years for her to get pregnant. She had to fight to bring me into the world. Maybe that's also why we're so close.
All we have is now. I must remember the holiness of the living, breathing, present moment.
It is sacred work to be a caregiver for someone you love. It is an act of devotion. I am honored to care for her. Many people will never know this kind of love. This experience is taking me to the depths of pain, but it's also showing me how much love I contain. I only have that love because of her. I am giving back all the love she has given to me.
The spiritual is more important than ever. I don't mean believing in god. I mean creating and protecting a space inside myself that the world cannot touch—a space that is pure, tender, gentle, filled with light and love. I mean connecting to the birds and the trees and the beauty of art. I mean cherishing the inner life, the world inside that is mysterious, primal, and bound to the heart of all things. It's the part of me that contains the cosmos.
These words are my soul. I feel the life in these lines. I write them by hand on paper first. They are all that is alive and burning inside me.
Connection diminishes the terror of being alive. We can give such comfort and warmth to each other. We can make life more bearable, and yet we so often don't.
