Rahmattt❤️

When my dad died, we had until 4 p.m. that same day to bury him. We were grieving, trying to process the fact that he was gone, and somehow, in the middle of all that pain, we also had to decide where he would be laid to rest. But what made that day even more difficult was that the decision we had already made as his children wasn’t the decision some family members wanted us to make. Some family members arrived at our house asking where we wanted to bury him. They asked my siblings and me separately, and we all gave the same answer: we would call the imam, and he would lead us to the Muslim cemetery where we could bury Dad and lay him to rest peacefully. That way, when we pray for him at the burial ground, other people can benefit from our prayers too. And when other people bring their loved ones there and pray, our dad can also benefit from their prayers. That was how I was raised. That was what I was taught. That was what we did when my dad’s grandmother and my mum’s father passed away. But there was this insistence that because the house was his property, he had to be buried there. You would think they cared that much about what happened to us. We eventually had to go with what they wanted, for the sake of peace. His death was unexpected, and we had very little time to make a decision. As Muslims, he had to be buried before 4 p.m. that day, so we had to make a swift decision and move on. Now, here’s the irony. Some of the same people who insisted that he had to be buried in the house because it was his property are the same people saying they cannot visit us because the sight of the grave is too traumatic for them. Were they expecting it to be rosy for us, his immediate family? We lost our father too, yet we have to live with that reality every day. I’ll say this: when someone loses a loved one, whether it’s a young widow, a widower, or children who have lost a parent, the best thing you can offer them is empathy, not judgment, pressure or unsolicited opinions. Grief is already heavy enough. Please don’t make it heavier for the people who have to live with it every day.