“Please come home now. Your dad and mom faced a misfortune.”

My heart stopped. This is the moment every child living far from home fears the most: the call that asks you to come back, but not from the voices of your parents. The call that shatters the illusion that there will always be more time.

I rushed home in tears, my hands trembling as I clutched my ticket, my breath uneven as I boarded the train. The journey stretched endlessly, each mile carrying me closer to a reality I could not bear to face. I pressed my forehead against the cold window, silently pleading: please, let this be a mistake. Please Ya Allah, I beg you.

But it wasn’t.

I arrived home to find two lifeless bodies lying in the living room. My parents—who once filled this home with laughter, with warmth—were now covered in white shrouds.

Time stopped. My world stopped. I wanted to wake up, but this nightmare was infuriatingly real. As I walked closer to their corpses, these thoughts ran in my mind: How am I supposed to continue life without their voices calling my name? Without their prayers into every step I take? Without their hands, once so strong, now forever still?

I tried to console myself with words meant to offer comfort:

“Someone’s fate, including their death, is already decided 50.000 years before the world was created. Please accept it.”

“Your parents were taken in such a beautiful way, you couldn’t ask for better. You should be patient.”

“No matter how much you cry, they will not come back. Please be strong.”

“Hold yourself together. Your younger brother needs you to be someone to comfort him.”

But nothing could reach me. Nothing could make this hurt less. All I thought was: I am supposed to continue life after this? Isn’t it too impossible with the heart that will carry great pain all my life? Also how? Someone should tell me how to continue life after something so heartbreaking like this.

I thought, maybe with time, the pain would dull. That grief would grow tired of tormenting me. But days passed, and I remained numb. I still cried even when I told myself to let it go because there was nothing I can’t do any more to bring them back. I moved through life as if in a fog, my body present but my soul somewhere else—somewhere still clinging to the past, still reaching for hands that would never again hold mine.

As I couldn’t rewind time, I would try to do everything I could do, including saying the words I never said. Here are the words I’ve been wanting to tell you both, Mom and Dad. I regret that I couldn’t say them while staring at your eyes:

Mom and Dad, even if I could choose my fate, I would still choose to be your daughter a thousand times over. I asked Allah to make me yours not once, but twice: here in this world and in the hereafter. Forgive me for every time I failed you, for every hardship I unknowingly caused. Forgive me for being difficult when all you ever gave me was love. I regret every unspoken thank you, every moment I took for granted, every time I thought we had more time. Thank you for raising me, for giving me all that you had, for being my home. I witnessed that you two had done your best. I pray you both have a beautiful life there.  

Until we meet again in the hereafter. 

Love,

iim