Year Seven - The Power of Community

A friend told me many years ago that every cell in the human body replaces itself every seven years. Whether or not the science is entirely accurate almost feels beside the point now. I have always loved the metaphor hidden inside the idea.

We are constantly being remade.

Nothing in life stays exactly the same. Not joy. Not grief. Not identity. Not even the body carrying us through it all.

The only thing we can really do is savor the good when it appears and learn from the moments that break us open.

Lila turns seven this year, which means every trace of the tiny body I once carried is physically gone and remade anew. And yet, at the same time, she continues building upon a lineage that stretches backward through me, through Mom, through Ba, and generations beyond all of us.

Watching Lila struggle with some of the same things I did as a child has made me realize how deeply inheritance shapes us. Not just biologically, but emotionally, relationally, and spiritually. Sometimes I feel like nothing more than a small participant in a much larger relay race through time. I can choose to carry forward what was beautiful, challenge what was limiting, and hopefully leave behind something slightly better for the generation after me.

There is something strangely comforting in realizing that we are all both gifts and consequences of the people who came before us.

Lila is fiercely independent, like me, but deeply people-oriented, like Mom.

She can sulk dramatically when she doesn’t get her way, like me, but then dissolve into laughter and softness like Mom within minutes.

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

I could probably fill an entire book with all the moments where she reminds me of someone else we have loved.

And when those moments happen, I often think about my mother’s quiet delight whenever I remind her of people from her own life. She would smile to herself, immediately pick up the phone, and call her sisters or closest friends so they could all laugh and lovingly dissect whatever personality trait had resurfaced through me.

Now I find myself doing the exact same thing during my daily calls with Dad or conversations with family and friends. Even though we deeply miss the people who no longer physically walk beside us, we are undeniably better because we knew them.

I feel incredibly lucky that my inheritance has been rooted more in love, stories, warmth, and connection than in invisibility or fear.

Lately, I have been thinking a great deal about what it means to stand between generations of strong women I deeply love. In Hinduism, the same word, Kal, is used for both yesterday and tomorrow. The older I get, the more I understand the cyclical nature of time and memory.

My yesterdays with Mom somehow feel deeply connected to the future I imagine for Lila.

I miss Mom’s presence in my present life, but more often now, I find myself smiling with gratitude for having had her at all.

Living through COVID amplified many of these reflections. I constantly imagined how Mom would have handled quarantine. She absolutely would have made embroidered matching masks for all of us in wildly coordinated colors. She would have somehow expanded her social circle while social distancing and found ways to turn isolation into community.

Even now, imagining how she would move through situations has become its own form of companionship.

When lockdown began, I realized I had a choice. I could retreat fully into my introverted tendencies, or I could intentionally work to create connection and community around us. So I pushed myself to keep people close. We expanded our bubble carefully. We hosted chai dates, outdoor dinners, and tiny moments of togetherness whenever it felt safe enough to do so.

That decision carried me through.

I wanted Lila to continue seeing other children, hearing laughter, experiencing shared rituals, and understanding that difficult moments are not meant to be survived alone.

As the months passed, I finally began to understand something my mother had instinctively known all along: community is not extra. It is essential.

As a child, I often wanted my mother all to myself and could never understand why our home constantly overflowed with people. Now I understand that she was building a support system strong enough to hold life’s inevitable joys and sorrows.

People need people.

That truth reveals itself everywhere.

In the small risks we take when we show up for one another, even when we are exhausted.

In friendships that sustain us quietly over decades.

In communities that fight for dignity and justice when systems fail people.

In our ability to look beyond difference and recognize ourselves in each other despite race, culture, politics, religion, or fear.

Relationships allow us to give and receive help.

Grace allows us to move beyond irritation, ego, and difference.

My mother touched so many lives because she understood this intuitively. It took me seven years after losing her to fully understand the depth of what she was trying to teach me simply by how she lived.

Seven was her favorite number, so perhaps it makes sense that this realization arrived now.

Every cell in my body may have changed since I last hugged my mother, but traces of her remain everywhere in how I move through the world. Motherhood itself has become one long continuation of learning from her life.

Even in death, she continues teaching me how to be a better human being.

And while I have learned how to live without her, there will always be a part of me that wishes she could have co-raised Lila beside me. I miss her every single day.

The Mexicans believe a person dies twice. The first time is when they physically leave this earth. The second is when people stop speaking their name.

I will keep speaking here. I will continue weaving her stories into Lila’s life so that she remains part of our family’s living memory long after the people who knew her firsthand are gone.

This year, we also lost two more of Mom’s siblings. Somewhere in my imagination, I picture them all together again, sipping chai, laughing loudly, and picking apart stories about the rest of us from wherever they now exist.

I still do not know what comes after death.

But I no longer feel consumed by the need for the answer.

What I do know is this:
community softens grief.
Connection gives life meaning.
And love leaves behind echoes strong enough to outlive the body.

I remain endlessly grateful for the richness Mina and Lilavati brought into our lives, and for the generations of warmth, resilience, humor, and grace they passed forward to all of us.

Every year, the number of people who knew my mother personally becomes smaller.

So thank you for continuing to remember her with me.

Thank you for staying on this journey and for reading these reflections year after year.

I hope all of you are healthy, safe, and surrounded by people who remind you that you belong.