Introduction: When Loss Reveals What Life Is Sitting in my apartment, surrounded by the quiet hum of another year gone by, gratitude arrives unbidden. Not the forced kind, rehearsed for social media or New Year's resolutions, but something quieter—rooted in what my late mother made possible. Peace be with her. Last year she left was eventful, though that word feels too small, too tidy for what actually happened. Her passing turned my life upside down. Not in the cinematic way