Here I will document everything I remember because I’m beginning to forget and forgetting is unpleasant. Forgetting is tearing me apart from the inside. Forgetting is making me feel guilty. Grief is a reflection of guilt. I am not ready to forget.

So it begins. The day. 4 in the morning. The sound of my mother in prayer. The kettle, loud. The lights in the hall, bright - if you are not awake enough, it’s as bright as day. But I’m awake. I’m awake and my eyes sting. Not because of the light. Because of a sleepless night. Why was I sleepless? God knows, I’ve forgotten. 

Then, 8am. I rouse awake to the sound of my mother, again. This time, she’s in the pantry. A familiar bag of essentials - dubbed the emergency kit. I know what’s in it- a cooler with injections / gauze for when the blood refuses to stop soiling the sheets / extra bed sheets for when the nurses glare at the stains / a t-shirt / a water bottle / a record of how much water he’s had over the months / the hospital card / the hospital book / a snack for when he feels hungry / a drink - an essential because he refuses to let them drain more of his life than he has / a box of leftovers from a dinner of pasta / පැනි පොල් - coconut pancakes / medical records - or at-least, what’s relevant in that moment / pampers / the imminent sorrow of two parents shouldered by one. 

I am half asleep. My mind is unsettled. Mama is half asleep. But for the first time in a long time, nana is well-rested. His face is strangely aglow. Eyes, watery but alive. Awake. Like he’s seeing colour for the first time. Or maybe this is just me making something out of nothing, but I wasn’t the only one who noticed. Dada stirs his tea as he watches the house come alive. The tv lights flicker in the darkness of the morning.

Here’s what I remember him wearing - a bright blue t-shirt we got him for Eid the previous year, black trousers. I remember the electric blue and black sandals I put on his feet, while complaining to mama about how they were falling apart. Mama says ‘let’s throw them away / new sandals, a good birthday gift, noh?’ We laughed. I remember laughing. Awkward, tired laughter. And him, looking like he had never heard people laughing. Never heard us laughing. Like this was the first time he was truly listening to laughter. A mock mask of a smile was on his face. A ghost of understanding. Like he was saying, ‘I don’t understand why you’re laughing but I’m happy you are because I haven’t heard you laughing in so long and I thought you forgot how to, like I have.’ His mask slips from his face. We talk about him growing smaller, weaker. His eyes sweep over the house like a camera in slow motion - like he’s taking in every detail we looked past. Like he knew he would never return. Mummy recites her daily supplications of farewell, he shrugs as she blows on him - like he knows this is more for herself than for him. I send them off - dada, mama and nana. 

9am, in pajamas, logging into a lecture. Tafsir on Surah Naas. We learn about how faith in the Almighty, is like the body of a bird - one wing of love, one wing of fear. Nothing too little, nothing too much. We learn of balance. Of how life is an amalgamation of sorrow and joy.

Then 12 in the afternoon, I’m dressed in my comfiest clothes, remains of Eid a year prior. Now that I think about it, we all wore remnants of a day of celebration that day. If only we had known what was to come, would we have? I don’t know. Dada is back home. Later than usual. I ask him what held him back - he tells me that the hospital was being unusually difficult today. Like they knew something we didn’t. 

4pm, 

I am in my room. In darkness. Because by this time around, I was more comfortable with being in the dark than surrounded by light. Dada’s phone rings and my heart rate escalates - I don’t know why. All I know is that something is wrong. It has to be. But I don’t know why. I remember breathing slower to listen in. Then I hear the rocking chair creak. I hear my father pull open the curtain on his way into his room. I hear the sound of a shirt being pulled off a hanger. I run into his room. Except I didn’t run. I walked. I crawled. I ask him what’s wrong - he looks at me like he’s wondering how I know. He tells me, ‘something is up, I’ll be back soon. Don’t tell the others.’ By others he means my brother and mummy. He fumbles with change. His face is calm but his fingers are pulsing. I know this is a sign of fear. I fear what he fears. 

6pm, my mind has driven in circles for the past two hours. I’m chasing away what-if’s, hiding from malli because I don’t want him to worry, reassuring mummy when all I want is to be reassured. Then, my phone rings. Mama. Mama is calling. I pick up. She doesn’t wait for me to speak, ‘Lanka or General?’ I’m confused. I’m confused but I also know. ‘How is he?’, ‘Bad. Bad and they want to transfer him. Lanka or General?’ ‘Lanka,’ I say, like it’s the obvious answer, ‘we’ve never been to General.’, ‘exactly. Exactly,’ mama says, like it’s obvious. It is. And it isn’t. How would we know any better? ‘Okay,’ she says, ‘okay. Lanka. We’ll go to Lanka. Tell mummy. Tell malli. Make dua.’ And before I can say anything, before I can ask anything more, the call ends. I am left seated at the sofa in the front, staring at the front door like if I stared long and hard enough they would come back home safe. All of them. Together.

6:30pm, the azan rings through the house. Static from the radio intermingles with my supplications. I am shaking in my seat but I must appear calm. Mummy is afraid but she is calm. She says, ‘it’s okay. I’m sure he’s okay. This has happened before.’ And she’s right. It has. This is almost routine. But today. Today is different. I know it is. My aunt comes downstairs, sits across from me as we break our fast. I can barely swallow a bite of my date when she asks, ‘did they call you?’ I shake my head and my eyes well up. She looks taken aback. She thinks I’m hiding something from her. Except I’m really not. I don’t know why I find myself tearing up in the bathroom. Tearing up as I wear my prayer garbs. Bawling during ruku’h. Pleading with Allah for ease, for relief from pain, for paradise - for a brother I’m so certain I will lose before the morning arrives. I don’t know what makes me cry as I resurface from sujood. My tears will not stop. It feels like the world is ending. It is ending. My brother is dying and I can feel it in my bones and my soul. Like this is the end of all I know and I will not survive this. 

8pm - mama doesn’t answer my call. Dada answers and tells me ‘we’re on the way. We’ll call once we get there.’ And I’m relived. For a split second, I can see a ward. The oxygen tank hooked. Mama beside a bed laden with white sheets. Nana, sound asleep. Dada getting them cups of tea. Them, coming home. Together. For a split second, I am relieved. 

8:30 dawns to the sound of heavy breathing because I am having an anxiety attack over unanswered telephone calls. My paranoia is reaching new heights. I see flashes of an ambulance colliding with a wall. I see nana’s eyes close. frantically I turn to texting the people closest to me. I’m asking them to reassure me but my texts read ‘I have a bad feeling/ I don’t know what’s going on/ they aren’t answering my calls, damn it/ what if something bad happened/ I hope he’s okay’. 

When the clock strikes 9, I keep calling them. Mama, then dada. Dada, then mama. Mama, dada. The lines blur. Neither answers. And then,

An answer. Dada answers. 

Silence.

Nothing.

No one speaks. Five seconds of silence. Then the line dies. I feel like I’m about to be run over by a truck but I can’t move because my feet are cemented to the road. Mummy is worried now. There is tension here. Everywhere. I tell her not to worry. I tell her to go pray. I tell her we can have dinner once she prays. I tell her I’ll call them again. They’ll answer. They will. I fall onto my bed. I turn to media surfing to ease the anxiety. But all I can think about is the five seconds of silence. Then, my phone rings. 

Mama breathes into the line. She sounds like she ran a marathon. Or like she’s been crying for the past half an hour. She says, ‘Najaha,’ and her voice. Her voice crackles. Falls. Dips. And I know. I know at this point. I sit up. I stand. ‘Ma?’ I say, I say this again. She breathes. She sniffs. I know what she’s about to tell me. I know but I don’t want to know. She says ‘nana,’ and I want her to stop but I also want to know, I want time to freeze but I also want to know. ‘Nana passed away,’ she says. She cries. She sounds like she doesn’t believe a word that leaves her mouth. I say ‘no. No no no’ and I mean to say ‘I know’, I mean to say ‘I’m sorry’, I mean to say ‘are you okay?’ But all I say is ‘no,’ like I can deny reality. Then she says ‘he’s gone. He’s gone, Najaha.’ And I’m sinking to the ground in the corridor outside my room. How did I get here? I don’t know. I’m crying. I’m saying ‘nana’ over and over like me calling him will bring him back. Like denial will bring him back. She says, ‘I’ll call you back.’ And I don’t want her to hang up but I also want to be alone. Because I am alone. My pillar of strength is gone. I have no one. I wail. It’s pathetic. It’s pathetic because I’ve known this day would come since the day I was old enough to know what death was. I knew. And still, still I didn’t want to know. I’m wailing and the sound of my wailing brings mummy and malli to me. And all I can say is nana, nana, nana like it’s the only word I know. Like they’ll understand and they do. Mummy is crying. Loud. She’s so silent usually but now, she’s loud. And it’s devastating. My heart breaks over and over for the rest of the night. Malli is yelling, ‘no’ like me. Like he doesn’t believe it. It surprises me that I do. I believe it. Because I knew. Something in me knew. 

10pm, telephone calls. Lots of telephone calls. I don’t like answering them. I call my aunts. They don’t pick up. I’m angry and tired and so grief stricken I leave them ambiguous voice mails like somehow they are to blame. I’m cleaning the house. Why? A funeral needs a clean house. Until I realize, we are in the midst of a lockdown. The chances of a funeral is slim. My brother is not coming back home. When he left that morning, he left for good. I still clean. I still hope. I still cling to the calls my mother makes. My parents don’t return from the hospital. I feel truly alone. The only comfort I know are the letters on a screen that makes me want to cry even harder. I feel alone. 

12am, we are calling up doctors at midnight because they’re threatening to burn my brother. They say ‘we can never be sure’ like a sick boy who has never left his room could somehow carry the virus. Like my brother is not human just because he’s dead. Anger. I know anger. I’m angry. But I’m also desperate. More phone calls. So. Many. Phone calls. Cups of coffee I can’t drink. A dinner I pack into the fridge though I know it will rot therein. Hugging a pillow because that is the only physical comfort I’ve known since the news of his passing - the room haunts me. 

2am, my head pounds under the weight of my grief. It feels like time is playing tricks on me. One moment I’m 4, pushing a pink wheelchair down a corridor, nana, peals of laughter. And the next I’m seated on my parent’s bed, crying because I’m afraid I won’t be able to see him for one last time. Family says the elders need to see him more than we do. What would they know of us? What would they know of him? What do they know except to speak and speak and speak of things no one but they care about? What would they know of our grief? Malli and I riot. How dare they. How dare they even suggest the idea of us foregoing our brother’s funeral. I curse the pandemic. For the first time since news broke, I curse the pandemic. I curse the lockdown, the country, the inhumane urge to demand respect where compassion is needed, the words of elders being shoved down my throat. I just want to see my brother. How dare they. Malli strokes my hair as we try to sleep. We try to put our grief to bed. We breathe. I cry. He wipes a stray tear. He stops wiping my tears when he realizes they won’t stop falling.

4am, 

I adorn a white hijab over a black abaya. What colours do you wear to a funeral that’s more or less a final visit? We drive to the masjid illuminated by street lamps. The stars are bright and terrifying in the morning sky. I am so angry at the world that I want to pull every star down and stomp on them. How dare they shine. How dare they. At the masjid, a cacophony of people. Familiar faces. Grim. A funeral. I remind myself this is the funeral of someone I know. Someone I love. The only funeral I remember is my great grandmother’s - the one where I watched them stuff cotton in her nose and wondered what would happen if she suddenly awoke. I shake that thought away. I walk past the people I know. I see my mother for the first time since 8am the previous day. I want to run to her. Run to her and hug her and cry with her. I want to scream and let her scream. I don’t do any of that. I stare at her, from a distance. We are both wearing masks but even if we weren’t, I know she wouldn’t smile at me. She looks like the world has lost all of its light. It has. It has. My aunts are talking in whispers. The female side of the masjid always makes me feel queasy, contained, so small. So small. I reach my mother and I hold her hand. Her hand feels heavy. Her smile is heavy. She looks like she wants to tell me so much but all she says is, ‘he’s gone, Najaha,’ and I want to tell her he’s in the room next door. He’s right there. That’s his face, his body, his smile. That’s him. There. Draped in white. Motionless. But it’s him. He’s right there. But I know he isn’t. Who am I kidding? He’s not there. He’ll never be there. He was never his face, his body or his smile. I step outside. Dada sees me. He holds my hand. I squeeze his in return. He says, ‘mahal,’ and his voice. His voice is soft. It has always been soft but in this moment, he’s barely audible. In the place of my father, I see the young man who stomped out of a hospital theatre 23 years ago. I see devastation. I see helplessness. And he lets go of my hand. That’s all. He doesn’t cry. His eyes are watery. His face is firm. But his hold on my hand said everything I’ve wanted to know. The birds rouse awake and sing. I hate them. I hate them so much but by God, I feel better. The sky is turning a million shades lighter. Pink. Blue. Purple. Rain clouds from last night. So much I’m forgetting. I forgot it rained. It rained so much, how could I forget? But this is what grief does. It leaves you uncertain, of the truth of things.

6am, I don’t get to see the burial. I get taken home. I comply. Somehow the anger and sadness has melted into a cesspool of exhaustion. I am exhausted. Mama steps into the house and backtracks. She breaks down. She cries. I hold her. We cry. We cry because that’s all we seem to know how to do. It’s all that seems appropriate. Nothing else would make sense. We’ve let them bury a part of our hearts six feet under ground. 

8am, 

Mama is holding his pillow. The last remains of his scent. Of his warmth. She cries, again. I’m resting my head on her lap. I’m crying, again. We cry until the exhaustion puts both of us to sleep. In my dream, I am stuck in an endless void. There is no way out. But, there is light. Somewhere. And it smells like my brother. Like his hand cream and lotion and medicine and wounds and smile and speech. My hand feels held. I dream of him holding me down, from floating further into the void. I wake up to my mother clutching my hand in hers, like she doesn’t want me gone too. 

Dua for the deceased : 

اللهُـمِّ اغْفِـرْ لَهُ وَارْحَمْـه ، وَعافِهِ وَاعْفُ عَنْـه ، وَأَكْـرِمْ نُزُلَـه ، وَوَسِّـعْ مُدْخَـلَه ، وَاغْسِلْـهُ بِالْمـاءِ وَالثَّـلْجِ وَالْبَـرَدْ ، وَنَقِّـهِ مِنَ الْخطـايا كَما نَـقّيْتَ الـثَّوْبُ الأَبْيَـضُ مِنَ الدَّنَـسْ ، وَأَبْـدِلْهُ داراً خَـيْراً مِنْ دارِه ، وَأَهْلاً خَـيْراً مِنْ أَهْلِـه ، وَزَوْجَـاً خَـيْراً مِنْ زَوْجِه، وَأَدْخِـلْهُ الْجَـنَّة ، وَأَعِـذْهُ مِنْ عَذابِ القَـبْر وَعَذابِ النّـار

'O Allah, forgive him and have mercy on him and give him strength and pardon him. Be generous to him and cause his entrance to be wide and wash him with water and snow and hail. Cleanse him of his transgressions as white cloth is cleansed of stains. Give him an abode better than his home, and a family better than his family and a wife better than his wife. Take him into Paradise and protect him from the punishment of the grave [and from the punishment of Hell-fire].'