I am in a dark room, stifled with the pain and torture of grief and loss. I feel the walls, musty and wet with my tears…………………… I cannot get out; I feel I will never get out.
Again and again and again, it is July 13, the knock on the door, two policemen asking to come in, asking me to be seated, asking me if I am Tariq’s mother, telling me that “Tariq is deceased”
It goes on and on, the torture of the memory of that day and the days succeeding is repeated relentlessly, till I am exhausted. I have searched for a door to this dark prison of grief with the ongoing torture of memories, and have so far been unsuccessful.
I want to get out of this pain and yet……..as I look at (in my minds eye) the card on the flowering plant that we brought home after the burial…….it says “for the funeral of Tariq”………my son’s funeral, I stare at it reading and re reading the words by memory, my son, my child’s funeral? And the torture begins again.
I must get out of this room, which has no sunlight, no love and is filled with the dark dankness of sheer loneliness. I have tried every humanly possibly act to free myself from this pain………..”Humanly” I guess, that is the key ……humanly; I must lay aside humanly and speak, beg, implore, and invoke the Divine for help.
I place my hands on the dark walls of this prison into which I have been thrown without my will, and invoke Allah SWT…………help me, help me, help me please……………… and as my hands slide down to where my head rests on the wall, my right hand encounters what feels like a door knob, I grab it and invoke Allah SWT with every surah, every dua from my limited repertoire. I repeat and continue repeating them till I feel the door open up just a crack and I see the beautiful sunlight and the flowers in the garden.
Over time, with this exercise of invoking Allah SWT, I have come to the conclusion that with every word of my Salaat and Dhikr the door opens some more letting in the light, the Nur of His (SWT) Huda, opening up my chest, a bit more and filling my heart with just a little more of peace and solace.
People ask me didn’t you pray before? I say…….. never with this fervor and despondency!
It is only when one is imprisoned in the dark cell of grief does one realizes the power of The Light, as it comes through the walls of this prison of grief, by the repetition of the words of Allah SWT.
As His (SWT) words spill out of my heart, one by one, the heavy door imprisoning me in the darkness of grief cracks open some more letting in The Light of His (SWT) words, His Mercy and His solace.
I am deeply humbled and eternally grateful by His promise of solace as it enters me in my dark prison ………….little by little.
