This site has spoken about my Dad in quite a number of its articles. And lovingly it has always expressed how dearly my Dad has been to me. And not only to me but to my pretty li’l rosebuds as well. He was a father to my children. And I must say, he was the best father-figure my children would ever have.
On his passing about a week ago, more than being sad about the loss of a father, I was more apprehensive about the reaction of my daughters who have spent their growing up years with my Dad as their Dadz too. I was worried that they might not be able to carry on gracefully over the next days without Dadz. In fact one of them sent me an SMS that didn’t spell the word “died”:
“Mumay how did you carry on after your grandparents d….. Crossed the other side?”
I can’t remember what exactly I replied to his message but I resolved to save some thoughts about it for this blog.
Death is a painful loss however prepared those left behind must be. My posted articles may have been my way to accept the inevitable end of my Dad’s long struggle with emphysema. Luckily, I had a wonderful chance to be with him months after his stroke. I was able to take care of him and to apologize too that should anything happen, I cannot just run back home anytime that I wish and so I told him and expressed in a lot of ways how much I loved him. And then the few weeks before his final hour, I called home a lot more often than I ever did since I had been away just to let him know that I love him.
With gestures like that I supposed that my intelligent li’l rosebuds could follow my lead in time of Dad’s death. They have to be strong to be able to move on without Daddy. During the week-long funeral where I joined them on mobile from a flight distance of 4,833 miles away, they sent me “live broadcasts” updating me on what has been happening there, who came to join them, what they ate, what they did, etc. More importantly and probably in an attempt to relieve them from longing, they sent me messages about what they did everyday with Dadz. And their messages spelled what they miss with my Dad day in day out. I remembered that my Mom told me how my Dad cried whenever my girls would not be home yet from school. Or when the girls had an activity in school wherein he would have attended was he physically able to, he would cry to my Mom because he can’t go to see his little young women perform and awe the audience. For someone so close to one’s heart, all this does make death sound so bitter.
So to my pretty li’l rosebuds, here are some thoughts to sweeten death a li’l bit. I’ll tell you what, my loves. Before God created the whole universe, He created a writing tool. (He may have even invented something better than the iPad before Steve Jobs did. Allahu Akbar!) God has written out the destiny of the world first before He even made the world. Such that your life has already been completed out from cover to cover since the day you were conceived to the exact minute that you will die. Your destiny has been laid out. Allah Knows Best. He gives us life and puts an end to it because our life is just a test for who can and will obey Him and serve Him well. And so God ordered two angels (See how generous Al Rahman Is, He gave us two angels not just one!) to sit on your shoulders, one on each side. On the left is the angel who encodes your bad deeds. On your right is the angel who encodes your good deeds. And then from those portable tablets on which the angels have archived your deeds, will be the measure of your worth to deserve heaven.
And so my loves, there must be no one to blame however tragic one meets his death for God programs the microchips of our lives. What is most important is that during our lives, we have served God and obeyed His wishes to the best that we can. Death is temporary. On the Day of Judgement, our tablets will be restarted to show God our archived accomplishments and failures (as if He really needs to see them when He already is All-Knowing). And every inch of our skin will stand witness to what our angels had saved.
And so we prepare for the Hereafter. We must make our lives as pleasing to God as much as possible. We must take heed less of the whisperings of the devil but more of the Reminders that God has sent us (remember, our angels never say anything, it’s the devil that whispers). As for Dadz, his suffering from his illness may have been his way of redeeming himself for his sins while he was alive. Our efforts to want to do more good ends when we die. And so we just pray that God saves us from His Mighty Punishment. Instead we implore for His Greatest Mercy for God may be harsh with His Punishment but His being All-Forgiving is Greater than His Wrath.
We don’t prepare for Death. We prepare for the day that we bow in front of God who inshaallaah will take us into heaven. Now, isn’t that sweet?
Pretty Little Rosebuds 