One Year Since Abu

If there were one sentence I wished to convey to my father in his grave, it would be: “We are fine.”

A year has passed since his passing, and we are still learning how to manage our affairs, strengthen our solidarity and resilience, honor his memory, recall his life story, and keep alive his good customs and traditions, while continuing to show loyalty to those who befriended and loved him in life.

It has been a year since my father left, and I still feel that the words I should have said to him before he departed have not yet flowed. Something inside me resembles a “lump in the throat”; whenever I think it has subsided, it returns to remind me that loss does not end when departure does.

I used to think I had honored him as I ought to have… I reduced my social interactions and public appearances, and rearranged some of my affairs to make time to be by his side, to be his companion during his days and nights, especially in his final years.

I carried an internal pledge to repay him for some of the kindness he bestowed upon us throughout his life. I bear witness that some of my siblings preceded me in fulfilling this pledge and surpassed me in their efforts, which only deepened my sense of shame in light of my own feeling of inadequacy.

When he passed, I realized that no matter how much a person gives to those they love, they will always feel they could have given more. This is one of the harshest forms of loss: when time runs out, yet the heart remains filled with much that never found space for expression.

During the fifty weeks that have passed this year, my visits to his grave never ceased. I would stand there praying and offering supplications, talking to myself about him more than I talked to him… For me, visiting the grave was not merely a duty; it was an extension of that companionship, which I was neither prepared for nor learned how to handle—the suddenness of separation and the void of loss.

Then came my mother, who had been hospitalized a week before my father’s death, and remained until she passed months after him. I deeply contemplated that God’s decree was such that she did not know her life companion had preceded her into the hereafter, so she departed shortly after him. Thus, I found myself not facing a single loss, but two doors closing one after another, each containing a part of my life and memory, and the home where I learned the meaning of father and mother.

With time, I realized that the voice of inadequacy does not fall silent, not because we did not do what we could, but because when it comes to those we love, we do not see what we have done; we always see what we wished we had done.

Sometimes I ask myself: Is this self-reproach, or another facet of love and filial piety? Perhaps the answer is that some feelings require not so much healing as transformation into action.

I still remember your words whenever I felt remorse or gave something: you would repeat, “A reward for our deceased.” You taught me, in your lifetime and even more in your absence, that filial piety is not a fleeting attitude, nor words spoken on occasions.

Filial piety is preserving what they loved in you, continuing what they began, being good to yourself, beneficial to others, upright in your conduct, and keeping their legacy alive within you.

Father… forgive me for every shortcoming, for every kind word that was delayed, and for every moment I thought time would grant me another chance to make up for it. The days after your passing revealed to me that time guarantees us nothing.

As for my mother, I ask God to reunite you both in His mercy, just as He united you in this world.

A year has passed, O Father, and I still visit you. But today, I do not visit your grave merely to pray for your soul. I visit it to remember who you were, and who I was when you were among us.

May God have mercy on you, O Father, and on my mother.

My pledge is that this grief will transform into responsibility in my conduct, filial piety in my work, and goodness that flows from you to me, and from me to those around me.

Perhaps the most beautiful way to honor the departed… is to continue living as they would have loved us to live.

$ Sustainability Expert