6 years and a million tears later.

Six years feels long and short. It feels like everything has changed, and yet so much is exactly the same. The world is infinitely new, it moves too fast, it is digital, connected, easy and yet so complicated. It is impossible now to imagine you in this world. Your soul feels like a relic from the past, one who was confined to a set period, and whose life here expired right on time.

Subhanallah.

Everything in divine timing.

I see and feel it more than I can explain.

And the things that remain exactly the same are the pieces of my heart that will be broken forever, the pieces that nothing can ever put back together. And the sadness that remains in every memory my heart holds for you. It remains in the pain I knew you felt every day, and the longing that you could never quell. And it hurts me today, as it did that day, that I can’t touch a thing of yours, that I don’t have anything of you, and yet I am that which I seek and it still feels out of my reach.

#22 Click of a button.

#22 hurts the most today for some reason. It represents the pieces of our old world and reminders of this new world, the one in which you don’t exist, and the one in which all things are possible, and yet there is nothing left to do for you. And I am reminded of all of the times you would call me crying that you were hungry and you needed food, and I used to cry inside at how much it hurt to know that you couldn’t manage to feed yourself. I used to fight so much anger inside of me, like a child, I used to stomp my feet, yell and cry and I was so mean, so much of the time. I used to rush to you, afraid, anxious, anticipating, and every time I would find you different, nothing was ever the same, sometimes you would just lower your head in shame, and sometimes you would beg me to come inside. One time I remember that I came and you were so proud of what you had managed, of the clean room, the laundry, the roommates. And it hurts my heart so much to know that I was too afraid to stay, and so I had to go but I hope you know how happy I was for you, and that I know how hard it was, and how much it took for you to reach those heights.

And I pray for forgiveness for all those days where I couldn’t go, and for those days when I was mean, and cruel and afraid and too scared to sit and talk. Forgive me because I didn’t know then what I know now. I am sorry I couldn’t do more for you when you were here.

oh, how I wish I could have saved you but instead I have to mourn the complicated grief of knowing there was nothing more I could do, and yet wishing I could have held you here and now.

oh, how the emptiness is filled with the possibilities of a life we could never have had.

 I am sorry for the difficult life that poverty creates, the poison that loneliness generates, for all the suffering and pain that an illness like addiction enables and for all of the thefts it initiates. I wish for you a dignified return to your maker and I pray for forgiveness for you…and for me… for all the things we felt in our heart, but that our actions may not have always upheld.

You will forever be etched into my heart and I pray that I can remember your love the way that I can feel your pain with me.

There is a brokenness to this heart that I feel will never be whole. And the more time continues, the more I realize that accepting this allows us closer to seeing beyond the deception of this world. I am thankful for this broken heart, enabling a human experience that allows a depth of living not possible without the journey of traversing between darkness and light. The burden and blessing of this truth is in the tension we must inhabit, having known what we know, having felt what we have felt, and trying desperately to accept what we have been chosen to know.

May God grant us forgiveness, shower us in His mercy and purify our souls through these tears.

May He bring ease to our hearts with His full and complete love.

May He allow our minds to rest in our faith with the sacred relief we find in feeling/knowing the true beauty of divine timing and the liberation that comes with its acceptance.

Everything that is now, was always meant to be.

There is no other way it could have ever been.

I feel that today. Alhamdullilah.