To Him we Shall Return REFLECTIONS ON DEATH AND LOSS IMAN GHAZI
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ho will remember us after we are gone? Who will continue our deeds for us?
These were the questions I had heard my grandmother ask for years before she passed away. While she wasn’t necessarily looking for immediate answers, I always wondered about them myself. There was a point when I thought about it constantly… death, what follows, and how I, as a Muslim, would handle it. Ultimately, I came to the conclusion that it wasn’t something I needed to worry about just yet. I was wrong. I grew up being told to live as if each breath were my last. Anything could happen and my soul could be taken at any moment. I knew this, yet I was still unable to truly understand it until I experienced loss for the first time. When I was 11 years old, I lost a friend in a car accident. That was the first time I had ever experienced true grief. Despite being a child, losing someone taught me that death does not wait for you to grow old and live out your life. When I was 13, my grandfather passed away due to cancer. This time, I knew that he was sick, and I knew what was to come. A week before he passed away, his heart failed, but he was miraculously revived. When he passed away the following week and his Janazah was held, it somehow felt too soon. At that moment, I realized that no matter how many times one returns from being a breath away from death, they still must go. Now I am 18. I’ve lost two very important people in just the past year. On the third day of Eid, I woke up to the news that my uncle had passed away. This was when I truly learned that death comes when it is willed by Allah ﷻ. Four months later, my grandmother fell ill. I was very close to her as she had been a major part of my childhood. She was sweet, full of laughter, and had an inspiring and unwavering faith in God. It was so strong that she was sure she would get better in no time. This taught me that death will approach regardless of our spiritual condition. While all of these lessons have become part of my understanding of death, there is one major aspect that I believe is the most comforting of all. I hadn’t realized that the pain I was experiencing could be healed by simply reflecting upon my religion a bit more. With this, I not only better understood death, but I developed a clearer understanding of grief and the afterlife. A concept that I quickly learned to implement in my life was Tawakkul, to have full faith and trust in Allah ﷻ.“It may be that you dislike a thing which is good for you and that you like a thing which is bad for you. Allah knows but you do not know” (Qur’an 2:216). This is an idea that can be difficult to comprehend,
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