People often ask the usual questions. What is your long-term plan? Where do you see yourself in five years, ten years? My answer stays simple. I do not map too far ahead anymore. I hand myself small tasks, one after another. You could say I move through life a day at a time now. It might sound careless or detached, but it is not. Years ago I used to sketch elaborate futures. Then I watched almost none of them unfold the way I had drawn them. So I stopped forcing the blueprint and started following the larger design instead, the one that is not mine to control. When everything feels too heavy, I step back and try to sense the next move intuitively. I roll the dice and take whatever comes. Honestly, it feels freer that way. Who truly knows how much time any of us has left?

Lately the reminders have been sharp. Horrific news keeps arriving. people leaving too soon. Some only a few years older than me, some younger, even children. Didn’t they carry dreams? Hopes? Lists of things they still wanted to do?

I went through a divorce not long ago. It was mutual and peaceful. I hold to a zero-regret approach, so there are no bitter leftovers. If our paths cross again years from now, I will probably smile and wish him well.

These days my mind drifts often to childhood. Back then everything felt lighter. Rain especially. My friends and I would climb to the apartment rooftop, block the drains, and splash for hours in the collected water. Pure delight. Amma never stopped me. No one fretted about catching a cold, and somehow I never fell sick from it. Rain still falls, and I still love it. Sometimes I step outside and walk through it just to breathe in the wet earth. That scent remains one of the most grounding, alive feelings I know.

A wise friend once told me that every person arrives carrying their own set of troubles and emotional weight. You cannot escape that reality. You decide someone isn’t enough, leave, and search for someone better only to discover the new person simply carries different burdens the previous one didn’t. As Maula Ali said, if you spend your life hunting for a perfect human being, you will end up alone. The older I get, the more clearly that truth settles in. You convince yourself money will solve everything.

You grind through the hard years. By the time the money arrives, health has become the new obstacle. Youth has slipped away, energy has thinned, and the will itself feels drained. When you ride a bicycle you long for a car. You get a modest car and immediately want a flashier one. Life becomes an endless loop of wishes that never quite settle. When I was young I ached to grow up. Adults looked independent, free to decide for themselves, beyond challenge. Now, at forty, I sometimes wish someone else would simply tell me what to do and how to keep going.

This year has been a strange, uneven ride emotion after emotion. It opened with Amma completing her iddat. I stayed close, thinking I was supporting her. What I slowly understood was that I needed her presence more than she needed mine. With Abba gone, the house turned into a quiet structure where grief seemed to echo from every corner. I kept sleeping in the same room, on the exact spot where his body had rested before burial. Night after night I hoped he would appear in a dream and tell me he was fine. The quiet guilt of not having been there for his final breaths sat heavy inside me. I returned to Toronto with a weighted heart, offering prayers for his lasting peace. Work resumed without enthusiasm. Each day stretched long. I called Amma regularly, searching for comfort in the ordinary. But the year was not finished with us.

Three months later Amma fell seriously ill. Doctors placed her on strong medication. She was miserable yet still holding on with quiet strength. My brother traveled to see her. Then she called and said we should all go for umrah. Joy flooded me. I applied for leave at once and booked tickets. But the larger plan had different timing. The moment I landed in Karachi, Amma’s condition worsened. a lung infection that put her in hospital. All four of us siblings spun in anxiety as one complication followed another.

She remained hospitalized nearly a month. We cried, we knelt in sajda, we pleaded for mercy and a miracle. Our prayers were answered; she came home alive. She needed a controlled environment and constant care, yet we were grateful. The thought of losing her so soon after Abba had been something none of us could accept, even though we had tried many times to prepare ourselves for the possibility.

Amma is a fighter. With divine grace she met the pain with remarkable bravery. Nurses stayed to look after her. I kept my bed beside hers in the room. She would wake in the middle of the night needing help. My chest ached with sorrow. No matter how many times I asked what I could do, she would look at me with tired eyes and simply say, “Stick around.” She needed presence more than solutions. I stayed until the day I had to leave. I took her hand, kissed her head, and wanted to repeat the gesture again and again.

I asked if she wanted me to leave my job and remain with her. She told me to return to my own life. My brave Amma—my constant friend, guide, and emotional anchor. It tore at me to see a woman who had lived with courage, integrity, independence, and full vitality now confined to bed and machines. Still she insisted I go back to my routine. I made her promise she would not leave while I was away. She smiled, but her eyes carried a quiet sadness. On the flight home and for many days afterward, that expression stayed with me. Sometimes I still wake in the night, half-expecting to turn and find her there.

Back in Toronto I tried to settle into ordinary rhythm, talking with people, sharing jokes, moving through shifts one after another. Yet the fear lingered underneath. I prayed, made silent bargains, asked for patience and the wisdom to accept whatever was written. Some days felt manageable. Then my own body began to protest. A tight knot settled in my chest and flared without warning. My heart would race, sweat would come in waves of heat and cold, and twice I fainted. The doctor ordered rest and a battery of tests, many focused on the heart.

I took medical leave, feeling both relieved and guilty for not working. Emptiness filled the days. For a month I moved from appointment to appointment, examined physically and emotionally almost every other day. In the middle of that turmoil I felt thankful for the few friends who checked in regularly, simply asking if I was holding on. I also understood more clearly how important it is to stay connected with siblings. My brother would recite different surahs over the phone to steady me. When the heart reports finally returned normal, I was not surprised by the diagnosis that followed: stress, anxiety, and PTSD.

Now it is almost November. An entire year has passed. I am back at work, surviving the shifts, moving through terminals, offering smiles and jokes, trying to feel ordinary again. Life is not finished. The show continues. Sometimes the whole experience feels like an airport. I check in my bags, clear security and customs, and keep walking toward the departure gate, hoping I reach it in time to board.

Looking back across these months, I see how little control any of us truly hold. The carefully drawn maps get rewritten without our permission. People we love leave or nearly leave. Our own bodies signal when the weight has become too much. Childhood joys return as quiet comforts. Old teachings about imperfect human beings and endless wanting settle deeper into the bones. Yet inside all of it something steady remains: the decision to keep showing up for the next small task, to breathe the rain when it falls, to stay close to those who matter, and to trust that the larger design whatever it is continues even when our personal plans dissolve.

I no longer measure life by how far ahead I can see. I measure it by whether I can meet the day that is actually in front of me with as much honesty and gentleness as I can manage. Some days that means simply putting one foot in front of the other. Some days it means walking in the rain and letting the wet earth remind me I am still here. And that, for now, is enough.