Dear Diary,
Dad died on 8th January 2019. His death caught all of us by surprise. I have never celebrated new year neither do I welcome it. But I have always been hopeful for good things to happen in my life everytime the world turns old by another year. It is quite ironic how it had to turn out this way. We were barely a week into 2019.
Half my soul is gone now and my heart is broken beyond repairs. I miss my dad and I am missing him still. There is not a day goes by that I do not think of him. All the messages, the photos and videos of him I have in my phone; I never read, watch or look at because I know they will break me. I cannot allow my heart to take another blow. It needs to heal.
At times, I feel so angry at God. He had taken my brother and I question why did he have to take my dad. But I have learnt that death waits for no one, it will come not a second too soon nor a second too late. Death does not wait to see if things are done or not done. It simply arrives when it is time. It is the final breath, the only thing certain for every man.
There I was watching the peaceful death of this man whom I have called Ayah. I felt something in my heart, it felt heavy, if I could describe it, it would be a ship sinking to the bottom of the sea. Perhaps it was heartbreak but it felt like every other part of my body was broken too. Looking at him reminds me of a falling star; one of a million lights in a vast sky that flares up for a brief moment only to disappear into the endless night forever.
He died in the morning. His last breath took his soul. His soul left his body as he exhaled, and then he had no more needs, no more reason; he was released from his body, and, being released, he continued his journey into the land of Barzakh.
I, barely breathing, with my thoughts far away, my heart aching, my mind racing. I went back to the day when my brother died where I have learnt that people do not die for us immediately instead they remain in existence in a sort of aura of life which has no relation to true immortality but through which they are present in our thoughts in the same way as when they were alive. You cannot erase them. They linger at every corner of the house. Things you do as a family will bring you back to the memories of them. They live on in the background. They may be gone but they are not really gone.
And then I realised that I have one less dua of my parents. Ayah left, and my heart is a ceaseless sermon of loneliness. My heart is downcast with sorrow and pain that is so hard to bear. If I could turn my disbelief into actions, I would scream at the top of my lung to the whole world and cry out loud until I flood the world with my tears. What shall I do with all the time and hours living without him.
Faith has saved me. I taught myself the true meaning of Redha and how death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside me while I am alive. I reminisced the times he taught me how to perform the prayers. I pray that the clean trees will accept him, the clean earth cover him, that the flowers will accept him in beauty and the birds in rhythm. I pray that God will smile upon him when he come to Him purged of error and washed of the stain of life. I pray for God to grant me strength to be calm and collected for his funeral.
Sadness enveloped me but I am remembering the sound of his voice telling me to be happy, to live life full of might. I love my father as the star, shining brightly in my heart, happy and twinkling. I am not ashamed to say that no man I ever met was my father’s equal, and I never loved any other man as much.
If I cannot have any other man to love then let me love just my father for my love for him will not wither nor die. I had the life of the girl whose father is guide, exemplar, and friend. I believe that what we become depends on what our fathers teach us at odd moments, when they aren’t trying to teach us. We are formed by little scraps of wisdom. There were no official classes, he simply lived his life, I watched, observed and live my life with the values he passed down to me.
If his death is going to make me a better Muslim, I accept his death sincerely. We all know that a dying man needs to die just like a sleepy man needs to sleep. It is useless and even wrong to resist death. Hearts are broken everyday anyway. Some hearts are broken beyond fixing, some fixed and healed but all scars remain.
I am a broken woman now, confused like a lost kitten. I am grieving his death in silence and in ways that only I know would heal my battered soul. If I could trade my life for him to have a good health I would. His death has left such a great impact on me, even greater than life itself. All the deaths in the family may have changed me but I know I start and end with the family. The family chain stretch a little but it will not break because family is one of nature's great masterpiece.
In my isolation, I reminisce at how when I was young he had always called me to sit with him while he made dua after his prayers. I would sit on his lap and he would held my hands up. I was quiet as a mouse listening to him. He prayed for his parents, for his siblings, for my mother and for his children. It was always the same dua I wondered if he ever will get sick of it. As I grew older, I began to understand the story behind every dua.
May God have mercy on me if I did not try hard enough to do more for him like how a daughter should. Forgive me for being so angry when he left, I am not angry anymore.
I have learnt how to let it go and I am learning how to do it again.
For all the stories of my life that I never get to tell him, for all the love I still have for him, for all the sorrow and guilt I keep inside and for all the memories I have about him. I pray to see him in Jannah. I pray that we will be reunited again as one family and he will always be my Ayah right here in my heart, forever he will be because he gave me forever and I always will be eternally grateful for that.
