I thought I was strong. I thought grief would knock me down for a while, let me gasp for air, then loosen its grip the way everyone promises. I thought being her daughter for decades was savings I could draw on. When she died, the balance read zero.
I thought I had prepared for this day. Isn’t that what faith teaches us? That death is inevitable, that every soul shall taste it, that this world is only temporary? But the day my mother died, the earth closed not just over her body — part of me went into the ground with her and will never return. No amount of Qur’an verses, no library of hadith, no theories of barzakh could stop the dirt from swallowing my chest whole.
People said, inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi raji’un. To Allah we belong and to Him we return. I said it too, lips trembling, the way I’ve said it at every funeral since I was a child. But this time, the words tore me open. She returned. I stayed. What comfort is there in belonging to Allah when it means being ripped from the one person whose voice was home?
They say time heals. But time doesn’t heal, not for me. Time stretches. Time is silence getting louder every day. Time doesn’t bring her back. Time doesn’t stitch me together. Time is salt rubbed deeper into the wound, and now I am marinated in it.
I know all the lectures. I’ve listened to the barzakh series by Imam Omar Suleiman. I know what happens — the angels come, the questions are asked, the believer answers with clarity. The grave expands. Light enters. A window to Paradise opens. I know her faith was strong. I know she passed the test. My brain holds this knowledge like neat lines in a notebook.
But my heart hasn’t caught up.
For the first few weeks everyone called me strong, reasonable, functioning, the logic still running like clockwork. I took their praise like bandages. I showed up, I answered emails, I laughed when people expected it. Then around day thirty something changed, the scenes I’d kept at arm’s length slid through the barrier and hit. The feeling caught up to the fact, and I discovered I was more broken than I had thought possible.
Because at 10 p.m., I am not a theology student. I am not a model believer. I am a daughter clutching my phone, scrolling through her WhatsApp messages like scripture, pressing play on voice notes as if they were revelation. And when that isn’t enough, I open the gallery folder where her face still lives. Hundreds of photos, some blurry, some casual, all unbearable. I zoom in on her hands, her smile, the wrinkles around her eyes. My phone has become my inheritance, not money, not land, but pixels and sound waves. This is what she left me, fragments too heavy for my chest, too sacred to delete.
And yet none of those images compare to what I carry in my body, the sound of the shovel striking earth. There was no coffin, only her body wrapped in white, lowered gently into the ground. The kain kafan was her last clothing. Then the soil began to fall, shovel after shovel, each thud announcing she was gone, gone, gone. My best friend’s arms locked around me as I cried until my throat burned raw. That sound is lodged in my ribs, no theology has ever drowned it out. Because how do you return someone to Allah when I never agreed to let her go?
Grief is gravity. It pins me down, drags me closer to the floor. I don’t move on from it, I stagger under it. For thirty-two years, I lived for one goal, to make my mother proud. Every achievement, every decision, every night I broke myself at work, it was all to see her smile. That was the deal. I’d climb, and she’d be the reason. Now the reason is gone. The scaffolding collapses every time I try to lean on it.
What do I fear now? Nothing. The monster under the bed has already crawled out and taken her. What else is left to lose? Fire me. Leave me. Betray me. Nothing will register the same way.
But fearlessness is not freedom. It is its own kind of prison. I walk around like porcelain already dropped, waiting for the final shatter. Fear didn’t leave, it rotted into indifference. Some days I am glass. Some days I am ash. Most days I am just a body going through the motions, hollow where love used to live.
The cruelest part of grief isn’t just losing her. It’s losing the version of myself that only existed with her. With my mother, I was a daughter. Someone’s first call, someone’s pride, someone’s soft place to land. Without her, that version of me evaporates. Now I am just a wife who feels misunderstood, an employee pretending to care, a body pretending to live.
I reach for her when I argue with my husband, when I want advice, when I need to cry without someone telling me to stop. I reach for her when the world feels too heavy. But I find nothing. Just an empty chair. Just silence. And silence, in its own cruel way, is kinder than the living.
I sit in meetings. People laugh about deadlines, complain about traffic, gossip about diets. And I want to scream, Don’t you know my mother is gone? Don’t you understand the world has ended? How dare you keep going like nothing happened? The world should’ve paused. At least for a second. But it didn’t. The cruelty of life is its indifference.
Faith tells me she’s in a better place. Grief tells me I want her to answer my phone call. Faith tells me she’s at rest. Grief tells me I am restless. Faith tells me we will reunite on the Day of Judgment. Grief says, how do I even survive sunrise without her?
They say sabr, patience. They tell me to be strong. But sabr is not silence. Sabr is crying until your ribs hurt, then still lifting your hands in du’a. Sabr is collapsing on the prayer mat, choking on sobs, and still whispering, Ya Allah, forgive her, bless her. Ya Allah, carry her. Ya Allah, reunite me with her. Sabr is screaming into the night and then turning to face Allah again at dawn, because where else would I go? Sabr is not composure. Sabr is bleeding and still believing.
I know the hadith, when a person dies, their deeds end except three, ongoing charity, beneficial knowledge, or a righteous child who prays for them. I know I am that child. I know my du’a matters. But some nights I can’t even open my mouth. Some nights my prayer is only, Ya Allah, I miss her. Ya Allah, don’t let her be alone. Some nights I wonder, are broken prayers still delivered? Do tears count as dzikr?
I imagine her answering the angels with confidence. I imagine her grave filled with light. I imagine her resting finally, free of pain. And yet memory betrays me. All I can replay is the shovel hitting soil, the sound of earth falling, my father’s wiping his tears, her last days at the hospital and if in any of those moments I failed, my niece cried and screamed out loud without no one holding her. Theory does not erase memory. Faith does not erase the smell of dirt on my fingers.
People tell me she’s with Allah, and I nod. But at night I confess, "Ya Allah, I don’t want her with You. I want her with me." And then guilt swallows me, because isn’t that selfish? Isn’t faith supposed to surrender? And yet isn’t love supposed to cling?
This is the delay I live in: my brain knows the theory, my heart hasn’t caught up. My brain says: she is in barzakh, she is safe, she is waiting. My heart says: I am still pounding on the door that won’t open. My brain says: one day you will reunite in Jannah. My heart says: I can’t make it through this week.
Maybe this is what iman looks like when it’s dragged through grief. Not serenity. Not easy certainty. But clutching the rope of Allah with bleeding hands. Maybe sabr is not smiling acceptance, but refusal to let go even when everything inside you wants to quit. Maybe iman is saying inna lillah through gritted teeth, over and over, until the heart one day believes what the tongue keeps reciting.
What remains are fragments, her recipes; her handwriting on du'a lists, proof she once shaped the world with her hands; the way she said my name, a melody no one else can mimic. I guard them like inheritance. They don’t comfort me. They stab me. But they also prove that love existed strong enough to ruin me.
Until then, I’ll live here in the wreckage, one hand holding grief, the other clutching faith, bleeding from both, refusing to let go.
The worst is done. There’s nothing left to lose, except the people who would crumble without me. So I stay. I stay in this broken body. I stay in this unbearable weight. I stay because my breath keeps coming, stubborn, even when I don’t want it to.
Don’t mistake my standing for strength. Don’t tell me I’m strong. Don’t tell me time will heal me. Don’t tell me to “have a baby so you can move on.” I am not strong. I am bleeding in slow motion. If I keep breathing, working, showing up, it’s not courage. It’s inertia.
I don’t want to move on. I don’t want healing. I want a monument. Even if the monument is just me in pieces. If that makes me fragile, then fragile will have to be sacred. If that makes me useless, then useless will have to be holy. Grief is my inheritance, and I will carry it like contraband, like fire hidden under my tongue, until it reshapes me into whatever comes next.
Faith hums quietly in the background. I know the theories barzakh, angels, gardens of light. I know the hadith that my prayers reach her, my du’a is a rope across the unseen. My brain knows. But my heart is still in the dirt, clawing for her hand.
Maybe one day my heart will catch up. Maybe one day the thought of reunion will feel real, not abstract. But until then, I’ll keep sending Al-Fatihah like letters folded into the invisible. I’ll keep whispering her name into my palms, hoping the wind carries it. I’ll keep crying, praying, breaking. Maybe tears count too. Maybe weakness is also a form of worship.
And maybe this is the truth no one wants to hear, grief doesn’t end. It rearranges you. You don’t recover from losing the person you loved most. You just learn to breathe inside the wreckage. And if love was worth having, grief is the tax you pay forever.
So don’t tell me to let go. Don’t tell me to heal. Don’t tell me to be strong. Let me hurt. Let me carry this weight. Let me pay the price of love, again and again, even if it breaks me.
Because if grief is the only thread tying me to my mother, and faith the only thread tying me to hope, then I will hold them both until my hands bleed.
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