Devastation.

That’s what I felt at around 4:00 this morning as I was browsing friend’s blogs/facebook/myspace and came across something that well, frankly, broke my heart.

Death is near. It can come at any time and without any warning.  In our minds, we all think we have a lot of time and will live until we’re old. But how many of us will lose our lives at a young age unexpectedly leaving loved ones behind? This is reminder first and foremost for myself. I used to be able to taste death. When we are close to it or affected by it, we realize how death is near. But how quickly that feeling fades away and we forget.

For those of you that don’t know, I went to India a couple years back. It was simultaneously the best and worst time of my life. That experience shaped who I’ve become… it made me realize I had to take the deen more seriously and it influenced my decision to seriously consider marriage. 

While I was there, one of the other students in my group (and the only other Muslim student on the trip), drowned, may Allah have mercy on him and accept him as a shaheed. It was devastating to all of us. It so easily could have been any one of us. It could have been me.

Mohamed was a student at USC, full of life, energy and a very good heart. Everyone loved him because if you were with him, you were smiling because that’s the kind of character he had. After he died, some of us were in contact with his family members. In particular, I spoke via email, IM, etc. with his younger sister Farah.

How devastating was it for us who watched our peer who we had only known for one month be alive one minute and vanish in the midst of the Arabian Sea the next? How much more devastating must it have been for his family who was left without their only son and for his sister who was left without her only sibling, with whom she was extremely close.

It was more devastating for them than I ever imagined.

I learned in the early hours of this morning that since his death, Mohamed’s mother attempted suicide and was committed to a mental institution. Farah, who has also been undergoing therapy for depression as well, was left to care for her mother and step-father. How tragic for a girl her age (then 17) to have already lost your biological father, then to lose your brother and, theoretically, your mother all in the span of a short period of time. And perhaps even more tragic, she lost not only her family, but she’s also now completely lost her Islam.

Hearing this has brought back the sting of that experience. I ask Allah to use that sting to make me a better and more committed muslimah.

I know many people would say don’t have pity on them because of things they have done and perhaps brought upon themselves, but my sorrow for them is almost more than it was for him when he died. Because when he died, I had hope in Allah that He took him in His infinite wisdom for a greater purpose and that he had been granted the highest honor of being among the shuhadaa.

But for them… my heart weeps.