My Daughter Died, But I’m Still Mothering Her

Ana, Age 7 — Photo by Author

In July 2016, when we got the results of my 15-year-old daughter’s CT scan, my friend Babs introduced me to a new term: “anticipatory grief.” The scan showed that tumors in Ana’s lungs were noticeably larger than they’d been three months earlier, and masses in her abdomen had multiplied.

Having been through this eight years earlier with her then 16-year-old son, Killian, Babs…