It is written that once a body is buried and the last person leaves the cemetery, the deceased begins their trial to decide their fate. The truth is, two trials begin that day. My father is being tried in death, and I am being tried in life. How I care for his legacy, how I pick up the pieces, how I grieve and cry and mourn and despair feel like a test that, as of right now, I’m afraid I’m failing.
Anyone who knows me, knows my dad — I couldn’t shut up about him. He was bright, witty, generous, and good-natured. He took care of his family for 35 years, and never lost his position as the head of our family or as someone who had the final say, only because he never abused that position. He was never unnecessarily stern, or irrationally upset, or short-sighted in his parenting approach. He was direct and honest without being angry or impulsive. Everything was a lesson and nothing was impossible when it came to what my dad could do for us. He was the best dad we could ask for.
For the last year of his life, my father and I lived together while I worked from home and helped carry some of the financial load. I often felt somewhat embarrassed to be living with my dad at my age, but now I can’t even begin to explain how grateful I am for this past year. We had a routine just for us, where we relied on each other and took care of each other all at once. Some things changed, and some things didn’t. My dad always left his door open, literally. If he wasn’t changing his clothes, his door was open. This includes when he made and took phone calls, always opting to have the call on speakerphone and speaking at a volume that caused his voice to reverberate through the walls, into my room, interrupting my meetings and trains of thought. Every time he left his door open while we were both on calls I would have to get up, walk over to his room, make a face at him, watch him mouth “SORRY” at me, and then close his door. Now I wish I’d never closed his door. I wish I could hear his voice again.
He was my dad, but he was also just someone I became better friends with. I got to see him be vulnerable and emotional if a day wore him out. He somehow managed to be the one to pick up all my deliveries before I could — he joked that if he quit his job and instead got paid for every package he brought inside for me he’d make more doing that than he ever did at work. Instead of just reminiscing about big moments like birthdays or weddings, I am flooded with memories as small as the day we both tried to figure out why the smoke detector wouldn’t stop beeping, or when he and I serendipitously bought ourselves the same dark green puffer jacket from Costco a couple weeks ago. The ongoing argument we had about why he shouldn’t get green bananas, because I think they never ripen well (they just go from green to brown) which he totally disagreed with. I know that he liked his dishes extra squeaky clean, and he loved our cat more than us sometimes. There are boxes and boxes of brown sugar oatmeal in the cupboards because he noticed I ate some a few times in a row once and did that classic Dad thing where they buy as much of it as humanly possible without even asking. We share a bond I feel really proud of. We could talk about anything, nothing, and everything.
This time is so strange — the in between of when someone is gone but not fully gone. No part of my father has been replaced yet. The rice he cooked the other night is still in the fridge. The paper towels he refilled are still there, he was the last to turn on the dishwasher. The gas in his car has not run out, he had just tended to his beloved rose bushes that morning. His shoes are still in their place, his clothes are still folded, his bed is still made by his own hands. I’m afraid to replace anything, I’m afraid of even more of him disappearing.
I was always so nervous about how hard it would hit my dad if he were to lose someone close to him. He lost his brother, who was also one of his best friends and a father-figure after their own passed away at a young age, 10 years ago. I’d never seen my dad so sad. He never fully moved past that loss, and I constantly worried about what would happen to him if his friends and family started to pass away. I was so afraid grief would cast its spell on my dad again and he would fall back into that sadness — maybe even a greater, compounded one. I never thought he could leave us before someone else could leave him. He’s gone, and now I find myself under that very same spell of grief.
I don’t know who I will be tomorrow, or the next day, or at any point from now, because I never once asked myself who I would be without my father. He was my whole world. I worried for him constantly because I feared the worst and now the worst has happened, and none of that worrying made a difference. None of it kept him alive. It’s painful and shocking, and I’m afraid that I’m forcing myself to stay shocked. Shock numbs you, and I’m afraid of what is left of me when that numbness goes away. I can’t tell you what day of the week it is, I couldn’t tell you what time it was even if I was looking at a clock. Now, time is split into nothing but before his death and after his death. I’m angry that the doctors couldn’t save him, that I couldn’t save him. I, who was with him everyday and had a duty to help him and support him, failed him. I’m starting to sort through those feelings now, but better just seems so far away from here. He was just in the middle of all kinds of things: in the middle of helping his friend find a new job, in the middle of helping me find cheaper car insurance, in the middle of helping my sister settle in to her new house, and so much else. It’s hard to see so much of his life unfinished and unrealized.
I do find relief in seeing what Abbu left behind. He didn’t have any money, or assets, or what some other children can inherit. His wealth was all tied up in his relationships. With his coworkers, with his childhood friends, with his siblings, with our neighbors. People we’ve never met have come up to us and told us that he was like a brother to them or that he was there for them when no one else was. The most valuable lesson my dad taught us was to treat our friends like family, and it is comforting to know that he led by example in every way. And he left behind his love for us: all-consuming, unstoppable, unconditional love that, I hope, carries us through the rest of our lives.
When he passed, I expected to tell people these stories about my dad to explain just how much he meant to me. What I didn’t expect was for a lot of that to be unnecessary. People have been seeing me every day this week and saying things like “he was just telling me all about your new job” and “he had to step away from our conversation last week to call you because he wasn’t home when he said he would be”. People know how close my dad and I were, not because I told them, but because he did.
My older sister said it well: I know Allah is the greatest of planners. I know He has our paths predetermined. I know His plans, as difficult as they might be for a human, always come with the strength to overcome and learn. That He never puts us through anything that He knows we cannot handle. This is one of the worst things that can happen to anyone but somehow, I am still moving, breathing, eating, praying. I thank God and your prayers for that strength. My father placed his life in God’s hands, and I am learning to do the same.
I hope these stories of my dad help paint the portrait of him that lives in me for you:
When I was a toddler, I was playing in the back of my dad’s pickup truck and fell off the side. I was wailing and my dad came running out, picked me up, and was trying to leave to take me to the hospital. For some reason, I told him not to drive me — I told him to carry me there, by hand, on foot. And he did.
In elementary school every year the school hosted a Shell Silverstein Day, where we were asked to dress up and recite our favorite Shell Silverstein poem in front of the whole school and their parents. I chose ‘Jimmy Jet and the TV Set’ “because I really really love to watch tv all day”, I told my teacher, catching slight alarm in her eyes at my reply. We didn’t have “TV time” so we were free to watch whatever we wanted for however long we wanted and it rocked. Most parents attended the performance, but my parents couldn’t. I was crushed. My sister told me she would be there though, so we started brainstorming how I was supposed to dress up for the performance. Just then, my dad came through the door with three large boxes in hand, all imprinted with logos of items he carried at the 7-Eleven he owned. He said “I was thinking about your poem, and I have an idea.” He spent hours cutting holes in the medium-sized box for my head, arms, and legs and asked my sister to glue a sheet of aluminum foil onto the front of the box and draw some dials on the right. He made a headband in the shape of a TV antenna, and he slipped the box over my head. I looked exactly like our TV — it was perfect. “I can’t be there myself, but now at least part of me will be there with you.” The next day, I memorized the last few lines of the poem right before I took the stage and received a room full of laughs and “aww”s at the sight of my costume. I recited my poem flawlessly and took home the top prize. My father couldn’t be there, but I won because of him.
When I was just entering third grade at the absolute peak of the roller backpack craze, my sister and I were scanning the latest Sears catalogue and a blue roller backpack caught my eye. I had a backpack for the upcoming school year already, but I stayed on the page, silently wondering if it was worth asking my mom or Dad for it. I decided against mentioning it and turned the page. My Dad finished up whatever he was doing at the house and left to run errands. He came back with that blue roller backpack — he’d been watching me staring at it in the catalogue the entire time. That was my Abbu, always keeping a careful eye on his children, finding ways to be there for us without imposition.
When I was 19, my neighbor caught me speeding down the street and came over, said he was going to have a word with my dad. Abbu came home and I ran over to beat my neighbor to it and told him our mean, crazy old neighbor yelled at me for going like 5mph above the speed limit. He didn’t say anything, just nodded and went upstairs. A couple hours later I overheard him on the phone: “Hey John, this is Mirza, Hala’s dad. I wanted to say thank you for confronting her and if you see her speeding again, just call the police.”
Years ago my dad had asked me to get him a new pack of checks from his drawer. When I opened the drawer I saw that he had a big stack of old checks made out to him dated as far back as 1996. When I asked him about them he told me my Bare Abbu (my dad’s oldest brother) who passed away the year before, used to buy stuff from my dad’s store and always paid him by check so my dad didn’t have to write the items off. Unbeknownst to my uncle, my dad never cashed a single one.
