I enter the cemetery and follow the all too familiar winding paths. Overhead the jets taking off and landing at Hobby airport assault my ears with the roaring of their turbine engines. The anterior graves are shaded with beautiful live oaks. I’m headed to the back lot, to Garden number nine, Jannatul Naeem.
The munchkin is napping in his car seat. I pull all the windows down to let the breeze cool him. I grab the polyester peonies I had picked up at the Dollar tree and make my mini trek through the grave markers. Momentary panic when I can’t find her.
You would think a mother’s intuition would be enough to pave the way like an internal GPS system. I feel guilty that it is not so. The cemetery had grown so much since my last visit and there are no oak trees in this clearing to flag my path.
“Follow the markers,” I remind myself after I run back to check on my boy and make sure the car is cool enough for him. This time, I walk past the trio of teen siblings shot down on that fateful day in their home. Different birth dates. same last names and date of death. I walk past the high school athlete who collapsed on the field due to an undetected cardiac anomaly, his grave marker decorated with a football.
I walk past the lady who was the mother of one our beloved friends who has the same name as my little one. The hardest ones to walk by are the babies.
Tiny circular grave markers, you see, as they don’t take much space. Some pepper the odd sized spots at the periphery that flank the asphalt path. Others buried in shallow spaces around a relative. Filler gravestones like filler flowers. Baby’s breath.
I found her. I pause and exhale. Her flanks are empty, as I own the spot to her right. The only piece of land in Houston that I can claim as mine. It’s been too long. Her nameplate is obscured with mud and weeds. The old synthetic flowers feel heavy with clay in my fingers. The bright colors have sun bleached and the petals have shrunk into unrecognizable clumps. I replace them hastily so I can run back to the Rogue to check on her brother. The interiors are still cool due to the cross breeze. I unceremoniously dump the flowers to join the others in a nearby trash can overflowing with similar vestiges and from a corroded tap jutting from the dirt I fill a watering can to wash away the muck from her gravestone. I scrub off the embedded mud in the crevices with the only thing I have handy, baby wipes. I talk to her. I tell her to enjoy her time in jannah and to wait for me. The birdsong nearby soothes me. The tears will themselves down my face and I don’t feel guilty.
Well-meaning friends and relatives would remind me after her passing to show sabr without actually understanding how it manifests. As soon as a hint of discomfort would show on my face or I would start remembering, they would appeal to me to be strong and platitudes would spill out like sour fruit from a punctured grocery bag. When did holding in emotion become some sort of badge of piety and do we comfort our bereaved with the same level of empathy our beloved prophet (saw) emulated for us? I let those tears fall and I recognize them for the mercy for in fact that is how Rasulallah (saw) had described the tears that wet his blessed face as his infant son took his last breaths (1).
I wonder if I should invest in decorating her grave a bit more like a nearby plot planted with a blooming rosebush but then I rationalize I’d have to make the journey frequently to water it. It’s funny how the mothering never stops. I remind myself that her provisions are now in the everlasting domain of paradise as it is for all children living or passed on and that despite all my wretchedness and shortcomings, I will see her again InshaAllah (2,3,4). I reflect on how things have changed so much since my Abida has come and gone. I feel a sense of calm that He is in control. I head back to her ” little big brother” as he is far older now than his sister when she was living. He momentarily wakes and looks around the vast lawn with his inquisitive gaze. “Say salamalaikum big sister. Say Bye Bye Boo Boo!” “Bye Bye Boo Boo!” He sweetly repeats and dozes off again. I turn on the ignition and drive away.
References
- Anas bin Malik (رضى اللهُ عنه) narrated: We went with Allah’s Messenger to the blacksmith Abu Sayf, and he was the husband of the wet-nurse of Ibrahim (the son of the Prophet). Allah’s Messenger (ﷺ) took Ibrahim and kissed him and smelled him and later we entered Abu Sayf’s house and at that time Ibrahim was in his last breaths, and the eyes of Allah’s Messenger (ﷺ) started shedding tears. ‘Abdur-Rahman bin ‘Awf (رضى اللهُ عنه) said, “O Allah’s Apostle, even you are weeping!” He said, “O Ibn ‘Awf, 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.” (Sahih Bukhari)
- Narrated by Khalid al-‘Absi: “A son of mine died and I felt intense grief over his loss. I said, ‘Abu Hurayra, have you heard anything from the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, to cheer us regarding our dead?’ He replied, ‘I heard the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, say, ‘Your children are roaming freely in the Garden’.” (Al-Adab Al-Mufrad Al-Bukhari 145, Book 8, Number 145)
- . Narrated by Samura bin Jundub (may Allah be pleased with them): “Allah’s Apostle very often used to ask his companions, ‘Did anyone of you see a dream?’ So dreams would be narrated to him by those whom Allah wished to tell. One morning the Prophet said, ‘Last night two persons came to me (in a dream) and woke me up and said to me, Proceed! I set out with them…’ He mentioned things and places that he had seen, and then he said, ‘We proceeded and we reached a garden of deep green dense vegetation, having all sorts of spring colours. In the midst of the garden there was a very tall man and I could hardly see his head because of his great height, and around him there were children in such a large number as I have never seen. I said to my companions, Who is this? They replied, Proceed! Proceed!…’ Then among the things that the two companions (angels) said to him was: “The tall man whom you saw in the garden is Abraham and the children around him are those children who die with Al-Fitra (the Islamic Faith).” The narrator added: Some Muslims asked the Prophet, “O Allah’s Apostle! What about the children of pagans?” The Prophet replied, “And also the children of pagans.” (Sahih Bukhari 7047, Vol 9, Book 87, Number 171)
- Abu Hassan reported: I said to Abu Huraira that my two children had died. Would you narrate to me anything from Allah’s Messenger (may peace be upon him) a hadith which would soothe our hearts in our bereavements? He said: Yes. Small children are the fowls of Paradise. If one of them meets his father (or he said his parents) he would take hold of his cloth, or he said with his hand as I take hold of the hem of your cloth (with my hand). And he (the child) would not take off (his hand) from it until Allah causes his father to enter Paradise. This hadith has been narrated on the authority of Tamim with the same chain of transmitters. And he is reported to have said: Did you hear from Allah’s Messenger (may peace be upon him) anything which may soothe our heart in our bereavements? He said: Yes. (Sahih Muslim 2635, Book 32, Hadith 6370)