why do we think we know what 'forever' is?

on death and grieving

early this year, i lost two uncles within two weeks.

i think the scariest thing for me is the shock and the unexpectedness of it all—you wake up one morning not expecting to hear the news you do. the stomach drops. you’re lost for words. i look at the message, thinking ‘…what?’

i remember i felt more pain for everyone left behind: my heart breaking for my dad, thinking about how he lost two brothers back to back and trying my best to give comfort; hearing the news and calling my aunty who had already arrived at the airport to go back home to the family. being on the phone for that kind of call for a second time so soon, not saying anything to each other, not having the words to say anything. hearing the silence on both ends.

“it’s Allah’s Will. look after your brothers,” was all she told me.

my ‘brothers’ being her sons, my actual cousins, who were still here. they didn’t go with her, they had school. doing what i was told, i texted my cousin, facetimed the other. one put on a brave front. we did what we always do and played imessage games. the other was angry, confused, hurt. i tried to comfort him anyway. we ended up talking about sociology. 

on to the next uncle i went—a warrior with sabr and trust in Allah, crying hot tears in his salah but surrendering to Allah’s Will with conviction. and then to my other aunty and uncle, who flipped the comfort onto me instead and started making me laugh in the midst of it all.

when death hits a family, you encounter all sorts of emotions and reactions. sometimes, i noticed in my case, it even brings the family closer by supporting each other and comforting each other. but then there’s also the helplessness, the hurt, the pain, the grief, the shock. the unexpectedness of it all. the silence. the ultimate surrendering that accompanies death. being reminded of your complete powerlessness and Allah’s full, perfect, complete Power.

in the midst of it all, i did what i always do when i need to manage my emotions. i started writing. back in february, i wrote an essay that i had intended to send out. it was titled, ‘why do we think we know what forever is?’ — but i wasn’t ready to send it out yet.

i think i’m ready to share it with you now.

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i think the problem is that we make this world out to be something that it’s not.

i recently had a family death and have been trying to make sense of all my emotions as of late. it’s conflicting — you know that there’s jannah and that they’re not gone forever, but then you're still sad that they’re gone. or is it the sadness for those who’ve they left behind, hoping that they’ll be okay? perhaps it’s also the sadness of knowing we have to go on without them.

during this grieving and anxious period, my mother was comforting me and told me:

“the problem is that in our day-to-day lives, we forget that our loved ones aren’t going to be here forever, that they’re one day going to die and won’t be here anymore. the sooner you realise and accept it that this person is not going to be here forever and really acknowledge that, the less it hurts when it does happen. because you know that it’s only temporary anyway and will see them in the next life”.

when she told me this, i remember feeling annoyed. i thought i’m not just going to go to all my friends and family and think, ‘you’re going to die one day’ when i see them—it’s not as easy as that. it’s still shocking when it happens, it’s not as though i will always be preparing for someone’s death like that.

it took me a while to realise what she was trying to say: that it’s not always about thinking negatively about your loved ones and going about your day preparing for their deaths. instead, it’s more about detaching from this world and realising that this here isn’t forever. thinking about the word ‘forever,’ i realised that there’s a tendency to fall into the illusion of ‘forever’—but what even is that?

when i think about jannah, i try hard to imagine what forever is and what it will feel like, but i can’t. i’ve never experienced the feeling before. here we age, we die, we have friends that slowly drift apart, we have things that eventually go away, we feel emotions but never permanently feel one emotion forever. 

if there’s anything we consistently feel, it’s change and loss. and even that change and loss isn’t forever either.

but in jannah, we’re never going to age. we’re always going to be happy. we’ll never die. we’ll be there—forever—in one place, for eternity. no matter how excited i am for it and how fun it is to fantasise and imagine being there with Allah and all my loved ones for the rest of my life, i still find it so hard to grasp the concept of ‘forever’. because i simply do not know what it feels like. 

when i was younger, despite knowing that jannah is going to be the best thing we will ever have and experience (may Allah grant it for us all), i still asked Allah ‘but… won’t we get bored? living there forever?’ — because i’m so used to everything being so inconsistent and changing all the time here. to think about what eternity would feel like seems as though it could eventually get boring after about twenty thousand years. alas, of course, it won’t. but it shows that forever is something we don’t even feel. the only forever we know of right now is Allah سُبْحَٰنَهُۥ وَتَعَٰلَىٰ.

so then, how did we even conjure up a word for a concept we haven’t experienced yet? why do we use it so much?

we’ll be best friends forever
you and me forever
i love you forever
forever and always

maybe we pretend that things are forever here because, deep down, we’re scared. scared of the unknown. scared of what we haven’t seen yet. scared of not knowing anything or having any control. scared over the fact that we can one day have everything, have this person, have this thing, and the next day it’s gone, they’re gone, they died. 

but when we take a closer look at fear, we realise that sometimes we fear the things we actually desire. for e.g., if someone has a fear of public speaking and says, ‘i can’t go up on a stage and speak,’ usually it’s actually, ‘i wish i could have the confidence to get up on a stage and speak’ or ‘i really want to be good at public speaking’. and sometimes, our desires can be blocked by fear and grief. (some fears are simply fears. i’m scared of spiders, i promise i have no desire to befriend one).

so, maybe this fear of losing people and/or things is so scary because we want forever. we want to be with everyone we love forever. we want to live in jannah along with all our loved ones, we don’t want to live here.

to try and solve that fear, instead of detaching from the world and trusting in the Only One we know is forever—Allah—we can go so far as to subconsciously convince ourselves that something is forever or forget that it isn’t. and, as our egos are fuelled by fear, when we listen to our egos, we can end up clinging to the concept of ‘forever’ and don’t want to let go, don’t want to surrender, don’t want to say goodbye. we attach ourselves to this world, we forget or push away the fact that this world is meant to have loss and forget that Allah is the Only Forever that we know, feel and experience. 

and then, when it doesn’t go our way, when we lose what we cling onto, we become so heartbroken. or rather, ‘egobroken’. but the reality is that our loved ones dying is a step closer to us experiencing forever, feeling forever—by living a good and righteous life and helping others live righteously too: 

Surely, man is in a state of loss, except those who believe and do good works, and encourage one another to accept truth, and encourage one another to be patient (103:3-4).

we’re not really in a state of ‘loss’ when we lose people if we truly do the above. death is actually a medium for us to experience what we long for, what we desire so badly. it’s arguably the ultimate test of surrendering to Allah سُبْحَٰنَهُۥ وَتَعَٰلَى. it’s the ultimate let go. 

but maybe this desire for ‘forever’ is prevalent because of how we, by our very nature, believe in Allah—the Only Forever, the Only Consistent. we’re reminded of the covenant of alast here:

And when thy Lord brings forth from Adam’s children — out of their loins — their offspring and makes them witnesses against their own selves by saying: ‘Am I not your Lord?’ They say, ‘Yes, we do bear witness.’ This He does lest you should say on the Day of Resurrection, ‘We were surely unaware of this.’ (7:173)

Alastu bi Rabbikum - am I not your Lord?

this verse means that by our very nature, we believe in God. that, before we were put on earth, we testified that Allah is our Lord, the Only One, our Creator. Abdul Qadir al-Jilani has written about this verse:

‘A time came when these souls started binding themselves to the flesh and forgot their source and their covenant. They forgot that when Allah created them in the realm of souls He had asked them, “Am I not your Lord?” and they had answered, “Indeed!” They forgot their promise, they forgot their source, their way to return home; but Allah is merciful, the source of all help and security for His creation. He had mercy upon them, so He sent divine books and messengers to them to remind them of their origin.  

And certainly We sent Moses with Our messages [saying]: Bring forth the people from darkness into light, and remind them of the days of Allah… (Sura Ibrahim, 5)  

That is, ‘Remind the souls of the days when they were in union with Allah.’  

Many messengers have come to this world, fulfilled their duties, and passed away. The purpose of all was to bring men the message and awaken people to heedfulness. But people who remembered Him, who turned toward Him, people who wished to return to their divine origin, people who arrived at their origin, became fewer and fewer with time.  

The prophets kept coming and the divine message continued until there appeared the great spirit of Muhammad, the seal of the messengers who saved people from distraction. Allah Most High sent him to open the eyes of the hearts of the heedless. His purpose was to awaken them from the sleep of unconsciousness and to unite them with the Eternal Beauty, with the Cause, with the Essence of Allah’.¹

that is to say, we have in our very nature and hearts an attraction towards Allah—the One who is Forever and Consistent, the One who truly and only embodies the phrase ‘always and forever’. this is why even atheists cannot simply disbelieve in God and leave it at that—they still believe in something, however false it is. because deep inside, our very nature believes in an Exalted Being as we were once all with Him in the realm of souls and testified to it.

this is evident when we say, after someone dies, ‘we belong to Allah and to Him shall we return’ (2:157). it’s not to Him shall we go. it’s return. go back. 

it’s also evident in the word ‘dhikr,’ meaning ‘remember’. why is it ‘remember’ Allah and not ‘think about’ Allah or ‘know’ Allah? because we already know who Allah is. He asked us ‘am I not your Lord’ and we all said ‘yes’. so, we have to remember Him.

we even took on this trial to become His vicegerent on earth, we knew that we would ultimately be rewarded with jannah for our good deeds and be punished if we did bad, as Allah says:

Verily, We offered the Trust to the heavens and the earth and the mountains, but they refused to bear it and were afraid of it. But man bore it. Indeed, he is capable of being unjust to, and neglectful of, himself. The result is that Allah will punish hypocritical men and hypocritical women, and idolatrous men and idolatrous women; and Allah turns in mercy to believing men and believing women; and Allah is Most Forgiving, Merciful. (33:73-74)

i.e. we took on this hard trial (which includes the constant experience of loss), and we’re hypocrites if we now disbelieve in Allah and His signs, His Messengers, His Angels—everything—because we chose this ‘burden’ in the first place.

yet, coming down to earth, we become ignorant, we forget. maybe this is why we think we know what ‘forever’ is because we do. deep down, we know Who really is forever, and we yearn to be with Him. we yearn to be with Al-Baqi, the Eternal, the Forever. so maybe this desire to have forever really is just wrongly misplaced with worldly things and attachments that we need to let go of. we need to not just know that everyone is going to die, but accept it. surrender to it. because it ultimately reminds us of the One who never dies. 

this world is not our home. one day you will die. your parents will die. my parents will die. so will my brother. all my siblings. one day someone will be reading this and i will be dead.

but that’s not the end. not even death is forever. there’s a better life waiting for us that truly is forever. but, as well as doing our part for it first, it can only happen through everyone departing this world.

of course it’s okay, normal, valid and good to feel upset with death and loss. our Beloved Prophet ﷺ, the closest person to Allah سُبْحَٰنَهُۥ وَتَعَٰلَىٰ, cried so much when he ﷺ lost his children, his loved ones. it’s actually important to feel your emotions and not push them away. grieving and surrendering aren’t as mutually exclusive as they may seem. but i realise what my mother was trying to tell me now. we all know that death is a thing, we all know that everyone is going to die. this isn’t new information. maybe it really is about reprogramming our mind and truly bringing this fact to the surface, truly accepting it and acknowledging it. embracing it, inviting it in wholeheartedly, learning to live with it. surrendering to it. detaching. letting go of our egos and the fear it feels. finding comfort in the fact that death won’t be forever. grieving nonetheless. but understanding that if we truly want to know what ‘forever’ is in this life, then we need to remember Allah, be attached only to Him and truly understand Him.

am i there yet myself? not even close. thinking about the fact that i one day won’t have my parents here with me keeps me up at night. but as Allah asks us,

Would you be contented with the present life in preference to the Hereafter? But the enjoyment of the present life is but little, as compared with the Hereafter. (9:38)

And whatever of the things of this world you are given is only a temporary enjoyment of the present life and an adornment thereof; and that which is with Allah is better and more lasting. Will you not then understand? (28:61)

i think i’ll try my best to start accepting what is so often pushed away out of fear, and surrender to the inescapable truth and reality. 

i don’t know what forever feels like yet. my uncles are on their way to. but i do know Who truly is Forever. i’ll cling onto Him instead.

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Grab a Blessing:

• la hawla wa la quwwata illa billah
  (there is no power and no strength except with Allah)

• Allahumma inni as aluka husnal khatimah x3
  (O Allah, I ask You for a good end to my life)

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Attribute of the Month - Al-Mu’izz, The Honourer:

an extract from my reflections on this month’s attribute:

“…but i’ve been learning to no longer need them or achievements to honour me. i’m learning that i don’t need to desperately try and prove myself as an amazing person to be seen—because that will never provide me with honour, esteem and approval in this life or the next. on the contrary, it’s the times in the middle of the night when no one else can see me and i get out of bed, turn on my lamp, squint my eyes and stand up to pray. it’s the times when no one else can see me and i turn to Allah and pour out my heart to Him. it’s the times when no one else can hear me except Allah and the angels when i recite the Qur’an. it’s the times when no one else can see me when i struggle and strive to please Allah. i’m learning that it’s these that will bring me honour because they will please Allah. and if Al-Mu’izz, the Honourer, is pleased, then He will surely grant that honour”.

read more here:

june - attribute of the month

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jazakallah for reading this one. i had to take a deep breath before i hit send, tears filled my eyes as i edited. as i write this. but writing is a beautiful release and a way to process feelings and events. it definitely helped me with this. may Allah forgive any errors i’ve made.

i’ve also had to say a lot of goodbyes in my life lately. not death this time but, as my friends and i will be graduating soon Insha’Allah, our university era together has come to an end, and we won’t all be living together anymore. all of us won’t even be in the same city anymore. so many tears have been shed, so many tight hugs. i was the first to go back home, and as we were all at the door, crying our eyes out, my mother looked at us all sniffing and was like, ‘…back in the olden days, when people parted, they'd next see each other in the next life because they didn't have social media or whatsapp’. we all laughed. even though i’m on a digital detox (which is going great by the way! alhamdulillah), i’m so grateful for the internet too. i’m excited for what this next chapter holds. and if you’re someone who also has no idea what this next chapter is going to bring, you’re not alone in that. one day at a time :) 

the day of arafah is approaching, please keep me in your prayers. and eid is soon, have a blessed and happy one. sending much love,

— SabrGirl ♡

1. Abdul Qadir Al-Jilani, ‘Introduction’ in The Secret of Secrets, p. 7.
click here for the full pdf copy.