In Armenian the word for struggle is “կռիւ” which is pronounced exactly like the word Grieve in English. In the depths of the grief of losing my father last November, it often felt like I was fighting with the traumatic memories of his last few hours of life. At first, I was the only one at the hospital when he was rushed there and they would not let me see him, demanding I decide on whether he would get a dangerous and not very viable surgery. My brothers were on airplanes so there was no way to contact them. I was alone, overwhelmed and just writing about it now makes my heart beat faster. I finally got to speak to him. He was lucid and understood everything but his tongue had stopped working properly so his words were slurred and he was only speaking Armenian which explained why the hospital staff thought he was not able to make decisions. In those last moments with my father, I had to tell him he was going to die. I had to tell him I loved him more than anything in the world and thank him for being my father. In those hours I realized that love is not happy, comforting, and cozy. It is being willing to stay in torment to make the person you love comfortable. It is being present even when you feel hopeless. It is facing the injustice of life and accepting it. It is the struggle that makes love what it is.