Last year, a week before Ramadhan, my family received a shocking news. My brother’s father in law passed. He had been unwell for a couple of months before finally lost his consciousness due to a possible perforated gastric ulcer. The allahyarham was a good man, with a relatively young family. He left a widow, and children who are still schooling. My brother took over the role of the family head during that trial time. He had only been married for 2 years, but what is two years when you can already feel like a family to a stranger you have just known for 2 weeks?
I was taken aback by the whole thing, cried a little bit at the office, but a day rest was all that I got, not enough time to fly myself back to Malaysia. So we prayed from afar. What I heard from my mom was that my sister in law & her mother were devastated. I am glad that my mom & my dad, though separated, both offered and helped my brother through that time of great despair. What was i thinking? of course they’d help.
It’s Ramadhan again… and I can’t seem to shake the fact that last Ramadhan was so traumatic for a member of my family that I am slightly still affected by it. Good to see that after a year, there are smiles (and loads of it too, Alhamdulillah..) in my sister in law’s pretty face. But as in this moment, I was thinking about her mother. Since she was married, there had been no Ramadhan celebrated without her husband. Sadly, this will be the second. There is one peculiar thing about the death of a loved ones. You just don’t feel like it’s death, it just feels like the person who left was only leaving to a faraway place… and that there is always a glimmer of hope that they would some time reappear at the door smiling.
Well, the truth is they are already “home”. It is us who are still on a journey and may be called home anytime soon.
Happy Ramadhan everyone,
It’s the second tenth of Ramadhan magical nights.
Make a full use of them.
Toodles,
Ana
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