There is no guidebook for accompanying your child toward death. No instructions for how to sit calmly while each breath grows slower, shallower, more deliberate. Parents are not meant to outlive their children. They are not meant to watch them weaken beneath thin blankets or whisper words meant to soothe a fear they themselves cannot escape.
When she was born, I held her with a fierce, instinctive strength I didn’t know I had. In her final hours, I held her again with that same strength—but now it was strength meant to steady her toward rest, not life.
Her hands felt smaller than I remembered. These were hands that once tied shoelaces, typed messages of encouragement, held her own children close, and fought relentlessly for survival. Now they lay quietly in mine, warm only because I cupped them. She existed in a fragile space between presence and departure, where time folded inward and each breath felt precious.
