October 5, 2014 at 2:21 pm, my father died. The first death of someone dear to me. I cried rivers and was scolded by distant relatives.

“Dear Samira, to cry is to ensure suffering for your father during his trials in the grave.”

“Stop Samira, have you no shame.”

“Samira, death is promised to us all. May Allah (swt) have mercy on his soul. Do not cry.”

The relatives continued with the same message over and over with only the slightest variation. I respond to each and everyone the same way, “My name is Muniro, not Samira.”

Their words slipped through one ear and out the other. What advice could someone who could not remember the name I told them merely hours ago…my name, hold for me. But I bit my quivering lip, took deep breaths, and tried to restrain my tears. My eyes brimmed and I willed the tears to stay put, only until I could escape to wallow in my pain alone.

As I tried to control the emotions building pressure inside me, I stared around the I.C.U room filled with family members from a range of ages. I realized that of the nearly 40 of us in the room, I recognized half and knew only 13 by name. Everyone’s eyes were on the bed, where my dead father now laid.

His cancer, after what seemed like an endless fight, had finally won. A few week before his death he had been hospitalized. During those weeks, I drove up from Nashville to Columbus every free weekend I could. The weekend before his death was the last time I spoke to my father. Of all the decision I’ve made, the biggest decision I regret is not staying with my father during his last weeks of strength.

Three days prior to his death he had undergone surgery. We pleaded with our father to not go under the knife, we tried everything. The doctors had told my father the surgery would be risky, but the pain he felt overpowered his reasoning. Since he had been diagnosed my father reminded us consistently of death, every passing conversation included the Angel of Death. He walked into the surgery room aware that might be the last time he would be alive.

After the surgery, he had been placed on life support. However, we did not discover this until the day before his death. The doctor called us into a family meeting room and explain the only options for my father were either to remain on life-support until he passes or for us to remove the life support and let him pass naturally. All of his organs were either failing or had already failed and his brain had shown little to no activity. Over the course of that Saturday before his Sunday death we discussed as a family what we should do. Our father had already spoken to us about the possibility of life-support and asked us in the event he is placed on it for it to be removed. We knew that would be the end decision but first we wanted to confirm that his brain was not functioning. The doctor ordered another test to determine brain activity and the following day told us that our father had little to no brain activity.

At noon on the day of his death, we began funeral preparations. While a few men began the funeral process, the remainder of us stood silently, holding our breath, around my father as the nurse slowly removed the life support. Each item he removed, I glanced at monitor focusing on his heart beat. Finally when everything was removed, in unison we turned to look at the monitor. His heart continued to beat, at each thump we released a bit of breath. Until his heart beat slowed and his blood pressure rose.  As we noticed this decline we began to chant the Islamic declaration of faith. Each beat followed by a syllable of the testimony, “ašhadu ʾan la ilāha illal-lāh, wa ʾašhadu ʾanna muḥammadan rasūlul-Lāh,”

Each second felt like an eternity as we watched the life slowly escape him. I felt my own heartbeat rise as his decline and I wished with all of me that I could give him my heart, as he had done for me all his life. Until finally the monitor let out a long beep and we knew the clock had run out for him. His time had come and I hadn’t even had a chance to say goodbye.

He laid there with his eyes open, staring at an empty ceiling. Those were not his eyes, they were not the eyes I grew to admire for their vitality, their strength, and their compassionate. They did not harbor that hidden spark of excitement that had comforted me on the occasions when his body had dwindled down to bones and his pants had begun to hang on the bones of his hips. They were devoid, empty, and if I had doubted his death, his eyes were confirmation.

I had not realized I had been staring for so long until my cousin reached out and closed my fathers eyes. At the closing of my fathers eyes, we all broke. It was official, our beloved father, brother, nephew, and cousin had passed on to the hereafter. My siblings and I broke out in tears, as our relatives whimpered silently attempting to calm us. In the sea of tears and unwelcomed hugs, I had only one thought. I never got to say good-bye.