The author and his mother. Courtesy of the author

I suffered grief of biblical proportions when my mother died at 90 in 2018. In a haze of sadness, it seemed comforting to imagine cloning her in a fertility clinic lab, where I could raise her as my daughter.

My mother, Naimma, was born in a remote village by the Tigris river in Iraq, where she faced many hardships. She grew up in a small Arabic community that shared the Muslim religion. She was shaped by her parents, whom I never met. She mourned their early deaths, praying for them at the cemetery daily for years. She had an arranged marriage at 13 and welcomed her first child at 14. I was No. 5 of her six kids. She had just come to the US when I was born and had to learn English.

I was 12 when my father died suddenly in 1969 from a heart attack. My mother now had to navigate raising her children on her own. She took the GRE, worked hard at California State University, Los Angeles, and obtained her teaching credentials. She taught for the Los Angeles Unified School District in the inner city until she retired.

She was so proud that I was going to be a doctor and made it possible for me to pay for medical school in Los Angeles. I want to thank her for the sacrifices she made to ensure my life was better. I wished I could make her new life better.

But after re-tethering to reality about cloning my mother, I saw the futility in my fantasy. She would be a project, a designed object with unrealistic expectations. She would grow up loving me as a father. Parenting is a social activity, not purely biological.

My cloned mom would be over 90 years younger than my real mom. Though she might look like her eventually, she would not have the unique experiences that made her the woman I missed so much.

My cloned mom would not meet or marry my father. She would not have her hilarious malaprops, like "The Star Bangler Spangle" and, "You are a rat pack." She would not be guiding me to the hadj in Mecca and showing me the traditions of Ramadan.

Now religion would be her choice. She would not be underemployed because of her early limited access to education. Her eventual medical issues could be mitigated or even prevented, as I'd be aware of what her body did as she aged. I would not have to stand by watching her slowly slide toward dementia.

What relationship would my brothers and sisters have to a reincarnation of our mother? Some have already passed away, so even before my new mom was born, she would have children who died. The rest of them could be jealous that she would love me more than them. They would be confused aunts and uncles instead of sons and daughters.

A clone is not a perfect copy of an individual. If we cloned John F. Kennedy, Princess Diana, or Martin Luther King Jr., these children would be unlikely to meet the expectations to achieve what was accomplished by their genetic predecessors.

No, there would be no solace in attempting to recreate my mother. The new Naimma would be a completely different person, even if, anatomically, she had the same genome. She would not be my mom, whom I miss so much.

Samir Shahin, MD, is a family-practice physician in Los Angeles. He wrote a sci-fi romance novel, "Override," about sending embryos into space with an artificial-intelligence caretaker.

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When my mom died, I wanted to clone her - Insider