grief with no ceiling
cancer doesnāt just kill. it unravels. it creeps. it eats in small, cruel bites. piece by piece. first the voice. then the appetite. then the laugh. then the little joys that make someone who they are.
i watched my mom fade like a candle burning down to its last glow. her voice, once sharp enough to command a room, became whispers you had to lean in to catch. her laughter, a sound that once filled our house, was replaced with silence. her favorite food turned into fear when sores lined her mouth. nights that used to mean kdramas on the couch became nights of whimpers, pain that morphine couldnāt soften, pain even fentanyl couldnāt silence. our last christmas was quiet. no noche buena, no noise. just bowls of mashed potatoes and porridge because that's the only thing her body could handle. that was the memory cancer left us with for the holidays.
but cancer doesnāt just hollow the body it lives in. it seeps out, draining everyone orbiting it too. i lived split down the middle: one half clinging, greedy for more time, the other half whispering please let it end, please set her free. itās a cruel thing, isn't it? loving someone so much that you start begging for their freedom.
i saw what it did to my dad. every morning, he carried her down from the second floor to the living room so she could feel the sunlight on her face. i found him hunched over his phone late at night, googling ways to keep her alive, as if some secret cure might be hidden on a forgotten page. he knew better, of course. but hope makes you irrational. love makes you desperate.
and my brother, heās a doctor, but when it came to our mom, he wasnāt. he was just a son who shook when asked how to ease her pain, a son learning that medicine canāt fix everything. like the rest of us in the family, cancer stripped away his rationality and left him lost and helpless.
thatās the cruelty no one prepares you for: cancer doesnāt stop at the body. it gnaws at love. it gnaws at hope. it forces you to grieve too soon, to mourn someone whoās still breathing. it turns homes heavy. it makes love exhausting. it makes hope feel dangerous.
i miss her. and what terrifies me is how much more i seem to miss her every single day. grief is not static. sometimes, it grows. it mutates, just like the thing that caused it. maybe thatās cancerās last cruelty: that even after it takes the body, it leaves behind something else to keep eating at us.

















