My mother passed away last week, we had such a tough relationship. This is what I wrote:

12.06.2023 Dubai

48C in direct sunlight feels hot, very very hot, especially in open grounds. Under normal circumstances one refrains from this exposure but the 10th of June 2023 had been anything but normal. It was a day when I had to lower my mother in her grave, a day when another story in the cycle of life came to an end.

The journey from the mosque to the graveyard took around 20 minutes and in the solitude of that cold ambulance I could say so much to her that maybe I should have when she were alive. The difference was that I could only hear my own voice even in the answers that were being woven through my emotions.

💡There is so much that we MUST say to each-other before it’s too late!!!

I lowered her in the grave with the help of a very special person; what an irony that someone from a part of a family that for us had been ostracized all through our lives was there with me at his own sweet initiative to help me in that simmering 48C.

💡Life is too short to keep grudges!!!

I turned Amma’s face towards Qibla and so held her face that had turned a million times towards me for the very last time, it’s warmth is still caressing my palms. I then loosened the knots of the shroud on her legs and touched the feet that had carried me at a time when I couldn’t do it on my own, just as she couldn’t move today.

💡The circle of life is cyclic so we are all taking turns and soon I will be left in another location just as I’ve left my own mother!!!

There was an instance from leaving her in the new abode and to be helped outside the grave where a million thoughts flashed by. A time of a few seconds that felt like an eternity where everything became vivid. I was leaving my mother in that dark ditch for an unknown period of time, with a hope of meeting her in a Better place. But together with her in that grave I also tried to unload a ton of emotional luggage that drags out towards grief and sadness. I dropped jealousy, envy, anger, greed and most of all the mighty EGO that devourers so many years of joy. I also slipped ingratitude and other vices that define us into who we are. While the cement slabs were being placed to cover the open grave, I could sense the closure of a chapter that had lasted for 78 years. I was the first one to Toss the fistful of dust toward a person who had raised me, so is life and then shovels full of sand sealed the gravesite.

My mother’s name WAS Rizwana Ashraf and my father WAS Kazi Mujib Ashraf. My name IS Kazi Najib Ashraf and soon WAS would also be mentioned next to my name as well, so is life.

But today here at this time, I feel no remorse, no ego, no insurmountable walls of the self to proclaim loudly that we are a nobody. I would like to say Alhamdolillah for everything and would like to apologize to anyone who’s been hurt by my words or actions.

48C never felt and would never be felt like that again.