Holding the Unthinkable: A Mother's Journey Through Grief

Entry Two: The In-Between

There is a place you can only enter when your child’s life is suddenly in danger.

It is not a place on a map.

It is not a room you ever choose.

It is a suspended state — where time loses its shape and certainty disappears.

That is where we lived.

After being airlifted to SickKids, my body still hadn’t caught up to what was happening. Everything felt unreal, like I had stepped into someone else’s nightmare and couldn’t wake myself out of it.

The hospital moved quickly and efficiently — the way places do when lives are on the line. People knew where to go. What to do. What to say. But none of that made it feel real yet.

What felt real was her.

My daughter.

My child.

Lying still in a bed that was far too big for her.

Machines surrounded her — breathing for her, monitoring her, sustaining something fragile that no one could promise would last. I remember thinking how strange it was that technology could keep a body going while a mother stood there praying for something no one could see.

I stood close.

I touched her.

I spoke to her like I always had — because not speaking felt like abandoning her.

Very quickly, the hospital became its own world.

I learned the language of beeps and numbers.

I learned how to read faces — which expressions meant concern, which meant neutrality, which meant hope I shouldn’t trust too much.

I learned how to sit for hours without moving and still feel completely exhausted.

Time did not pass normally.

Minutes stretched into something unbearable.

Nights blurred into days.

Sleep came in fragments — if it came at all.

I don’t remember eating.

I don’t remember hunger.

My body existed only in service of watching her.

Hope didn’t leave during those days.

That’s something people don’t always understand.

Hope doesn’t disappear just because the situation is dire. It becomes quieter. More fragile. More desperate. But it stays — because a parent’s love does not know how to stop hoping.

I hoped she could hear me.

I hoped she could feel my hand.

I hoped her body would find its way back.

I hoped for signs — any signs — that meant she was still there.

At the same time, dread never left either.

Hope and dread sat beside each other every minute, like two truths that refused to cancel each other out. I learned very quickly that you can live inside both at once — loving fiercely while bracing for devastation.

This was not living.

This was waiting.

I talked to her constantly.

I told her I was there.

I told her how much I loved her.

I told her things I didn’t know if she could hear — because not telling her felt worse than any uncertainty.

I told her she wasn’t alone.

I told her she was safe.

I told her she was loved beyond measure.

I needed her to know that, even if she couldn’t respond.

When you’re in this place, you stop worrying about how you look.

You stop worrying about what makes sense.

You say what needs to be said because time feels too fragile to waste.

My body never rested during those days.

Even when I sat, I was braced.

Even when I closed my eyes, I was listening.

Even when nothing changed, everything inside me stayed on high alert.

My chest felt tight constantly.

My breath stayed shallow.

My nervous system never powered down.

This is something I want people to understand:

the trauma doesn’t begin later.

It begins here.

In the waiting.

In the uncertainty.

In the constant vigilance.

Your body prepares for loss even while your heart refuses to accept it.

The strangest part was knowing the world outside that room was still moving.

People were going to work.

Kids were going to school.

Life was continuing in ways that felt offensive.

Inside that room, nothing existed except my daughter and the question that hung in the air — unspoken but ever-present.

No one asked it out loud.

No one needed to.

Those three days did not feel like three days.

They felt like one long moment stretched beyond what a human nervous system is meant to hold.

I didn’t know yet what the outcome would be.

I didn’t know yet what I would be asked to face.

I didn’t know yet how much worse it could get.

All I knew was that I was a mother standing watch over her child, doing the only thing left to do:

Stay.

Love.

Wait.

This was the in-between.

Not life.

Not death.

Just the unbearable space where everything hangs, and nothing is certain.

And when I think back on those days now, I don’t remember them as a timeline.

I remember them as a feeling.

Held breath.

White light.

Quiet prayers.

A mother refusing to leave her child — even when there was nothing left to do but love her.

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Gentle note to readers

This entry speaks to medical trauma, parental grief, and uncertainty. If reading this brings up overwhelming feelings or thoughts of harming yourself, please reach out for immediate support. In Canada, you can call or text 988 for 24/7 mental health support. You are not alone