Words and Afterwards…

We got our Late Daughter’s Death Certificate today. It is a sad day… Hubby didn’t come home for lunch and called up to say that he got ‘it’ and had sent it for the cancellation of her Iqama. It has become routine now… Hubby doesn’t come home for lunch when he is sad or remembering her. When she was alive, coming home was always so much of a welcome for him. Some how, she had a sixth sense for her Dad… Minutes before he unlocked the front door she’d run and go stand by the door waiting for him. I would sometime wonder how she knew the time or if she could actually hear his footsteps. She’d rush into his arms with her left palm on her forehead for a ‘salaam’. Then Son would run to Dad too and they’d both start pulling at him and fighting to who’d get to stay in his arms… They both would get carried around and I’d go snap a picture or two of them… Yes, I clicked pictures of them everyday…

Now, … Son misses her too I guess, ’cause he doesn’t rush to his Dad the way he used too. He just lounges around watching too much TV and if Hubby picks him up and forces him to say ‘Salaam’, he mumbles something and quickly slips off… back to TV or drives away in his car. Life has changed… so much of our feelings have changed. We try to resume our normal routine but, I guess it just feels like being thrown back into the past. As if, two years of our life has been taken away.

A few days ago, my sister asked me if I sometimes said stuff that I go back and feel I should have not. Yeah, a lot of times, actually. I even have a phrase for it. I call it ‘Words and Afterwards’! Recently, I have been going though a lot of ‘afterwards’.

When I first heard I had had a daughter, I was being wheeled out of the Delivery room… Met Dad on the way out and I remember so proudly telling him, “Dad you always said you were blessed with daughters, Now I can say so too!”

A few weeks later, still postpartum, Mum was sitting in the living room while sisters rushed around making her feel comfortable. i remember telling my mother, ‘I can’t wait till my daughter is all grown up and doing stuff for me..’