Here is the full context:
I let them figure it out between themselves. It seems easier this way. I stay quiet hoping they’ll fall asleep. I lie there in the dark churning and tying all the loose ends across the generations, these twisted strands of DNA like the red mauli string on my wrist from the puja we did for my father in India on the 10th day of his death, the thread going around and around like the love we carry for each other, even when we don’t, even when it’s not spoken.
My question is: What did she exactly do while lying in the dark beside her children? and what is the relationship between the marked sentence and the sentence after? Thanks
the reference is: Why we need to discuss a death in the family with the children | Aeon Essays