to the anonymous girl on reddit

I see you, because I am just like you, standing in the hallway between goodbye and grief. 

I know you’ve finally mastered the transfers, bathing, dressing, toileting, feeding, and repositioning. You’re accustomed to the paperwork, calls to insurance, and equipment deliveries. And your mind likely understands that, eventually, her body may linger long after her voice is gone. They warned you of all this. Their voices were steady, eyes kind, as they quietly turned your mother’s remaining days into another list to be managed. 

I can feel the tightness in your smile as you watch your best friends spill across the city through a phone screen, waiting for the late-night video messages where they recount weekend plans, dates, and laughter. I see you, in the quiet hours, nurturing and holding steady when life feels fragile. And I notice when you hold back tears in the corners of your eyes as you cancel plans before you even make them. Because loving sometimes means choosing responsibility over desire.

Nobody talks about how exposing it can feel to speak with emotional truth. Because emotional truth strips away our illusions. It leaves us without leverage. And yet it may be the only doorway through which we are ever truly known.

I hope you know that your decision to show up, worn down and exhausted, in a season you never chose is not weakness. It’s faith without applause. And I recognize that just because you don’t look like you’re drowning, because you’re breathing, doesn’t mean you’re okay. It just means you haven’t quit. 

But on the days you find yourself begging God to show you how to hold a life you didn’t choose, because you can’t feel anything but the weight, I hope you pause long enough to notice the love. Because it’s still there — in the sunlight peeking through your window, in belly laughs, in conversations that stretch longer than you expected, in the steady embrace from your younger brother, in unexpected kindness from strangers, and in the friends who never leave.

I believe that we are here on this earth to love others. Even when it hurts. Even when it’s inconvenient. And even when it asks more of us than we think we have to give.

In moments of frustration, it can be easy to slip into the belief that our life has been put on hold. But let me spare you what I had to learn the hard way: it hasn’t. This is our life. And as difficult and gritty as this path may be, God entrusted us to bear it. 

Pain is a privilege reserved only for those few precious souls who ever actually get to exist. And perhaps that is the cost of loving at all. 

One day, the hallway between goodbye and grief will empty. And when that day comes, we will not look back and see wasted years. We will see love. Imperfect, exhausted, stubborn love that stayed. 

And that counts.

because my love for them outweighs any pressure this life could ever place on me

A really unique experience happens to young girls who are faced with the anticipatory loss of their mother during early adulthood, especially for those who have younger siblings at home base.

It presents a conflict that reaches into every corner of our lives.

For me, it almost feels as though my being has been split in half, and I’m left straddling two worlds that refuse to collide. In the first, I exist as a twenty-four year old law student, with an unflinching determination, who knows exactly what I want and where I’m headed. But in the second, I exist as a big sister who is called home to be helpful.

When you are an older sister, you inherit a responsibility. You are handed a life that becomes more important than your own. And it is your job to protect that life with everything you have. It doesn’t matter what you have to put on hold or how many things you have to dismantle to keep something else from falling apart. What matters is that you stay standing, even when you’re worn thin. Because little eyes are watching, trusting you to prove that strength can exist right alongside weakness. 

While my mother’s ALS diagnosis was far from a spot I had marked on my map of young adulthood, it has taught me the true power that lies in continuously showing up for myself, and my siblings, even when I have absolutely no stomach for it. 

When I was younger, I used to dream about becoming some big shot attorney in the city. I’d always joke with my mom that she’d never stop raising babies, because by the time she finished raising hers, she’d have to start taking care of mine. I never thought I’d be the one coming home to help care for her, and hers.

While it deeply saddens me to recognize that the second half of that dream will never come true, I’m so blessed to have learned the heart of motherhood from her.

When I think about what a full life looks like, I don’t immediately think about my career anymore. Instead, I think about all the love that surrounded me and my siblings during childhood. And all the love I hope to surround my future children with someday.

It was my mother who made sure that love was always around us. She jam packed it into the Yukon XL that still somehow managed to never have enough seats. She hid it under piles of folded laundry. She carried it with her to every possible sporting event. She poured it into our morning cups of coffee. She ran around with it all over Town Beach. She cooked with it in the kitchen. And she circled us with it during our evening prayers. 

My mother filled us with a kind of love that doesn’t end. 

I think sometimes we get so caught up in focusing on what we’re going to miss that we forget about all the miracles we’ve already been given. And the life my mother has created for each of us seven children has been nothing short of a miracle.

The greatest gift my mother ever gave me was the privilege of being an older sister. My siblings are sewn into every thread of my existence, hiding in every memory, and it is because of them that I know unconditional love is real.

So while I may be uncomfortably caught in between two worlds right now, I’ll forever thank God that I have my siblings. And I’ll sink into the role of big sister, willingly, because my love for them outweighs any pressure this life could ever place on me.

to feel anything deranges you

I read somewhere once that to feel anything deranges you. And to be seen feeling anything strips you naked. 

I don’t think I fully understood the meaning behind those two sentences until I finally confessed to others that I will have to watch my mother’s able body slowly wither away until she eventually dies of respiratory failure.

If there’s one thing having a dying mother has taught me, it’s that people do not want to see you stripped naked. They prefer you remain covered so that they themselves don’t have to be exposed. 

…

When you have a terminally ill parent, it feels as though there’s this giant dark cloud hovering above you, constantly, relentlessly. And no one else can see it unless you tell them it’s there. But once you do, they can’t unsee it. And sometimes that cloud breaks open into a torrential downpour. So you do your best to hold up this giant oversized umbrella to keep yourself, and everyone around you, dry. But then the umbrella gets heavier. And eventually it collapses. And everyone gets soaked. And a lot of people, who were originally standing with you under the umbrella, are afraid of the rain. So they run for cover elsewhere. But you’re stuck in the mud. So you can’t run, no matter how desperately you want to. And some people are stuck in the mud with you because, like you, they don’t have a choice. But then there are the rare few who aren’t stuck in the mud, and they could run if they wanted. In fact, they could escape the storm entirely. But they don’t. They choose to stand next to you. And they get wet with you. And they hold your hand as you all do your best to enjoy the storm. I hope you know that it is these people who will save you, time and time again, if you let them.

…

To my very few people, thank you for teaching me that I’m not broken just because I can’t keep the umbrella lifted in every moment. For allowing me to feel the rain. And for never letting me sink too deep into the mud.

Because of you, I now understand that all of this is what makes me real, honest, and capable of love. 

And love, in all its forms, is the reason we ever grieve at all.