In the autumn of 2019, my mother was diagnosed with stage IV lung adenocarcinoma.

The doctor spoke with professionalism, one statistic and term after another. But my mind could only hear a distorted version of one sentence: time is running out.

On the drive home from the hospital, I kept thinking about what to do. Not the kind of “make a list and check off items one by one,” but something deeper—in a situation completely beyond your control, how much can you actually do?

The answer is: almost nothing.

I have a human bone dharma instrument given to me by my Tibetan Buddhist teacher.

Saying “human bone dharma instrument” might make some people uncomfortable, but in Tibetan Buddhist tradition, such instruments have a specific religious significance—they are not souvenirs, not amulets, but tools for practitioners. I don’t intend to explain Tibetan Buddhist doctrine here, because that’s not the point of this essay. The point is that this instrument held deep meaning for me, and I believed it had a kind of power I could not fully understand.

Three days after my mother’s diagnosis, I brought the instrument to the hospital.

I didn’t perform any ritual. No chanting, no prayer. I simply placed it by her bedside.

The next morning, my mother called me, her voice carrying a confusion I had never heard: “The instrument shattered.”

I rushed to the hospital. The instrument had indeed shattered.

It was made of bone, extremely hard. It was not glass, not ceramic, not something that would shatter simply from “being placed on a bedside.” No one had touched it, there was no fall, no external force. It simply shattered.

You could say it was coincidence. You could say the material deteriorated. You could offer a hundred rational explanations.

But what happened next made the word “coincidence” seem increasingly hollow.

My mother’s condition began to improve. Not “stabilize slightly,” but the kind of improvement that even her attending physician found unexpected. Her numbers dropped, her symptoms eased, and the trajectory of rapid deterioration we had been warned about was somehow interrupted.

I don’t know what that “something” was.

The next six years were time that had been forcibly pried open.

My mother’s condition fluctuated—not a cure, but not following the initial prognosis either. Every follow-up visit, every test was like negotiating with a countdown timer—we knew time was limited, but we didn’t know how much was left.

In those six years, I did things I would not otherwise have had the chance to do.

I accompanied my mother to places she had always wanted to go. When her body was strong enough, I took her to eat the things she loved. I recorded videos, preserving her voice and smile. I talked with her about things we had never discussed—about her childhood, her regrets, her hopes for me and my siblings.

These were not dramatic “bucket list” plans. They were mundane things, trivial moments easily consumed by daily life. But because I knew they were “extra” time that had been somehow extended, each day carried a different weight.

It’s hard to explain that feeling to someone who hasn’t experienced it. You live simultaneously in gratitude and sorrow. The gratitude comes from knowing this time shouldn’t have existed, and the sorrow comes from knowing that no matter how many extra years you get, eventually you must say goodbye.

In 2025, my mother left us.

I won’t describe the details of that day. Some things change when you write them down.

But what I want to say is: even with six years to prepare, even when you “know” that day will come—you are still not ready.

This may be the cruelest characteristic of love. It doesn’t hurt less because you anticipated the loss. It doesn’t mean you don’t need to say goodbye just because you already have.

The shattered instrument, the improving condition, the six extra years—I still don’t know how to classify this entire story. It’s not a miracle, because the word “miracle” implies a happily-ever-after ending, but my mother still left. It’s also not coincidence, because “coincidence” is too light a word, unequal to the weight of those six years.

It’s simply an experience I cannot explain. And I choose to continue living with this “inexplicable.”

I studied much about faith and reason debates in seminary. One school of thought says that the shattering of the instrument and my mother’s improvement have no causal relationship, and connecting them is a cognitive bias. Another would say it was the intervention of supernatural force, proof of faith.

I don’t stand with either side.

Not because I don’t care about truth, but because in this matter, the concept of “truth” itself may be more complex than we think. I don’t need to prove that the instrument’s shattering “caused” my mother’s improvement, nor do I need to deny some connection between them that I cannot understand.

This kind of “not needing to”—it’s not avoidance. It was learned.

I learned it by my mother’s hospital bed. I learned it on the repeated drives to the hospital. I learned it during those nights when the phone woke me at three a.m., I rushed to the hospital, only to find it was a false alarm.

In these moments, your rational framework is insufficient. Not because reason is bad, but because some experiences fall outside reason’s jurisdiction.

After my mother left, that shattered instrument is still on my bookshelf.

Sometimes I look at it and remember how it looked whole, remember the morning it shattered, remember my mother’s confused voice on the phone.

It reminds me of three things.

Life will break. No matter how hard something is, it has a breaking point. The instrument, people, everything you thought you could keep forever.

Don’t presume to understand everything. I don’t know why the instrument shattered. I don’t know why my mother improved for six years. I don’t know why she still left. I don’t know. And admitting “I don’t know” is the most honest response I can give to this experience.

Continue forward carrying a part of her. My mother gave me not just life, but a way of seeing the world, a way of facing difficulty, the ability to love. These don’t disappear when she leaves. They live in me, in every article I write, in every choice I make.

The shattered instrument is a marker. What it remembers is not a miracle, but the trace left by love exhausting itself completely.

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