Year Seven - The Power of Community

A friend told me many years ago that every cell in a human body replaces itself every seven years. Nothing in your body is over seven years because as cells die, newer cells regenerate so we can continue living. Our biology is the mirror of so many things in life. We are constantly being remade, and change is the only truly constant thing. Nothing stays with us, the good or the bad, so the only thing we can do is enjoy the good and learn our lessons from the truly bad things. 

Lila is seven this year, and every trace of me is gone from her body. However, she builds on a lineage that she inherited from me. I inherited my legacy from my mom, which goes back in time.

After watching Lila struggle with the same things I did as a child, I genuinely believe I am a meager pawn in the chess game of time. I can use my moves to build on what came before me and succeed where they didn’t, or I can retreat and stay where I am. It warms my heart to know I have been blessed with the gifts and burdens of my ancestry and that how I live my life will impact how Lila progresses in hers, and she continues to find her true purpose. 

She is fiercely independent like me but always needs to be around people like my mom.

She can sulk because she doesn’t get her way like me, but quickly gives in to laughter and cajoling like my mom (the drama).

She has the Shah family allergies and the Bhalakia family stubbornness.

I could fill this email with the spectrum of good and bad emotions, where she makes me think of other people in our life.

I think of these things, and I can remember my mom’s experiences of similar delight when I reminded her of other people in her life.

She always had a secret smile and picked up the phone to call her siblings and close girlfriends, and they would chuckle and cluck about us for hours.

I do the same on my daily phone call with Dad or when I talk to my family and friends, and even though we miss all of the people who no longer walk with us, we are all the better at having known them. I feel blessed to have been connected with more love than crazy and stories about silliness than hate or invisibility.

It’s so interesting to be between two generations of strong women I genuinely love. I constantly think about all the gifts I continue to uncover. In Hinduism, the concept of yesterday and tomorrow both use the same word Kal (pronounced cull), and I have come to understand the cyclical nature of time. My yesterday with Mom feels much like the tomorrow I imagine her in. I miss her presence in my present, but more often than not, I smile, thinking that I had the gift of her to shape my life.

Living through Covid, I have imagined how Mom would do it. She would have had matching masks for all of us with fantastic embroidery in all colors. She would have made more friends while social distancing and would have one more ring of friends marked by her big personality.

Imagining her in my life has become enough and a way to keep her alive, albeit in the most spiritual sense.

I channeled some of my mom when we went into lockdown, and instead of letting my inner introvert take over, I worked hard at having friends present in our daily lives. The small risk of opening our bubble to include more than the three of us has kept me going. We stayed as safe as we could through all of this, but not having to do it alone made the overwhelming chaos more manageable.

I wanted to ensure that Lila saw humans her age, and as I continued to have my chai and dinner dates, I realized that having a support system is vital for one’s sanity. It’s something my mom created for herself, and seeing her do it as a child, I have finally come to appreciate why we always had people over, even though I truly would have preferred having my mother all to myself.

The universality of our human experiences is constantly marked by the triumph of love over fear. It may be in the minuscule risks we take to put ourselves out there and makes friends even when we don’t have the energy for it or in the larger context of fighting for systemic injustices like we seem to be seeing in America since last summer. People need people.

All of these begin with recognizing that even in our differences, we are more similar to others than we think, and as humans, what we need more than anything else is connection and grace. Relationships help us give and get help, and grace helps us look past the quirks and irritation someone else’s differences may make us feel.

My mother touched the lives of so many because she knew this secret of life. It may have taken me seven years to recognize these simplest truths, but she continues teaching me things about life, even after her death.

Seven was my mom’s favorite number, so it makes sense why I am learning this powerful secret after ruminating on her life.

Every cell in my body might have changed since I was last with Mom, but the tracings of her are everywhere. Motherhood is one continual extension of learning from her life. Even in her death, she continually teaches me to be a better human.

I would be remiss to say that even though I have learned to live without her, I would have loved to have her co-raise Lila with me. I miss her every single day. The Mexicans believe a person dies their first death when they leave us, but they do a second one when people stop remembering them. I will always keep my mom alive till the day I join her in the ether or wherever she is. I hope to weave as many stories of her in Lila can continue to remember her so we don’t fade away.

We have lost two more of my mom’s siblings this year, who I imagine are sipping chai, chuckling, and clucking together again in their community post-earth.

I am no closer to the seven years of knowing what comes after death, but I have found the lightness in my being to keep living. Creating communities and channeling the grace that was a gift my mom got from her mom.

Let us all give thanks for the richness we had in our lives from remembering Mina and her Lilavati and hope that we can all find it in us to learn the lessons we learned when all these giants walked among us.

The number of people who knew her alive dwindles to a smaller group every year, but I thank you all for being on this journey with me and reading my notes about my mom year after year.

I hope all of you are well and are staying safe.