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A story, in brief:
In 2005 I met and was engaged to my husband.
In the summer of 2006 we married, moved to my new spouse's hometown of Alexandria, and in the autumn of that same year we found we were expecting a child.
In the February of 2007, after much heartwrenching discussion, I came back to America alone to give birth to our beautiful son, who came into this world in the middle of May. In July my husband and I at long last reunited. And in the waning days of December he passed away.
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Why "Impossibly Blue Skies"?
Because so deep and personal a loss is to my reframed view a reminder of the consciousness with which we must approach each time in the day we stop to say ar-Rahman ir-Rahim. Because I mean to believe what I say.
Because my husband was not mine, nor did he belong to our son, to his parents, his siblings, his friends, or any of the other bereaved. He was a light. He was loved. But he was not ours to keep. To Him we belong and to Him is our return.
Because there is a smiling child pulling himself up to peer over the top of my laptop screen. Because I am neither hungry nor destitute nor despairing without options. Because Allah subhana wa ta'ala does not place a burden upon any soul more than what it can bear.
Because the prophet salallahu alayhi wa salaam implored us to abundantly have rememberance of death. Because such remembrance should not be a matter of gloom for our hearts.
Because my husband used to wish before me to extend our time together in Jannah. And so I wish it too ... and so I pray on it too.
Because all of this ends. Because nothing created is eternal; because I am not the center and I can not leave my loss to be the center of me. Because losses do not mean that skies may no longer be so beautiful shades of blue.
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I am saddened of course, deeply so.
We went with Allah's Apostle (p.b.u.h) to the blacksmith Abu Saif, and he was the husband of the wet-nurse of Ibrahim (the son of the Prophet). Allah's Apostle took Ibrahim and kissed him and smelled him and later we entered Abu Saif's house and at that time Ibrahim was in his last breaths, and the eyes of Allah's Apostle (p.b.u.h) started shedding tears. 'Abdur Rahman bin 'Auf said, "O Allah's Apostle, even you are weeping!" He said, "O Ibn 'Auf, this is mercy." Then he wept more and said, "The eyes are shedding tears and the heart is grieved, and we will not say except what pleases our Lord, O Ibrahim! Indeed we are grieved by your separation."
Who could possibly not be saddened by the death of people beloved to themselves? We have never been implored by Allah subhana wa ta'ala to remain cold or closed. The prophet salallahu alayhi wa salaam wept, for Khadijah, for his children who passed, for companions and believers, for revelations and for sorrows great. No one might in earnest suggest that it is better to suppress what he himself did not. "Allah does not punish for shedding tears nor for the grief of the heart ..." But even in grief there may be paths to choose between dignity and indignity. '"... but he punishes or bestows his mercy because of this," and pointed to his tongue ...' "Whatever comes from the eye and heart is from Allah and is a sign of mercy, and whatever comes from your hand and your tongue is from the shaytan." And so in sadness I strive to mourn with dignity; I seek mercy and mercifully find what I seek.
The Prophet passed by a woman who was sitting and weeping beside a grave and said to her, "Fear Allah and be patient."
Sadness is tempered by nothing greater than the truest forms of patience. From this time it is this that I hope to remember always, until my own reckoning. I had immediately felt drawn to speak with other widows -- who else should have understood my feeling more than they? But I found widows -- not all, but some -- still struggling with their grief even years after the deaths of their spouses, struggling in ways which hold them bound to a time in their lives now past. It's not my intention to speak against them -- they are women in great and highly visible pain. But while I feel compassion for them I also can not help but to draw a comparison which shows a difference between trying to fight tooth and nail against what is decreed and already done and persevering with patience in the knowledge given to man by God. In the knowledge of sufferings and pleasures, in what is the domain of the Nourisher and the Reckoner, the Giver of Life and the Bringer of Death. By one way there is stalled torment. By the other, there is still light and life.
Above all I seek an-Nur, I seek light.
