The Calm to My Grief

I write this for me. I write this to help me slow down the waterworks. Because I do think they are necessary. But my loving husband reminded me of something crucial.

It was perhaps my fourth or fifth time crying about the imminent death of my father in the same day. I was in his arms, crying from the depth of soul, crying at the loss of my father's ability to speak.

My father used to command a room with his voice and ideas. You could hear him even if you were standing outside the house. He had a booming voice. A dominant personality. Now his voice barely audible, his words hardly discernible. And that is when he had a chance to be awake for an hour, before he went back into his default sleep mode.

I was crying at the loss of my father, who even when in the hospital after being told he had a month to live, was still making the entire room shake with the laughter of those around him. His charisma was undeniable.

I was crying because tomorrow were going to try to wake him, to say our last words, our goodbyes, our requests for forgiveness, our last human interaction with him. That's if he woke up at all. And that's if he woke up and wasn't combative as cancer patients are during their last days, the pain being unbearable.

I was crying because it may or may not be my last chance to hear how little his booming voice had shrunk to be, but still precious in any case.

But then my husband, who had witnessed me cry repeatedly in one day, thought it an opportune time to remind me to pray for him through the tears. Typically I prayed at other times rather than when I cried, but I headed his advice. And it was freeing.

I prayed that God make this a cleansing for my father, that He allow his suffering to erase any and all sins he has ever committed. Which got me to thinking. My father, as he is now, has absolutely no opportunity to sin any longer. He is a good man, but we all sin. And this is God cutting off any channels of sin for my father. My father is being cleansed of all his sins, and not being given a chance to create new ones. How enormous of a blessing is that? All praise is due to Allah.

It's not to say that crying a lot because of the loss of a loved one is something that needs to slow down. It shouldn't. But this, for me specifically, was freeing, and guiding, and a light in a gaping black hole where my father's voice once boomed.