Departure

Assalamualaikum warahmatullah wabarakatuh,

No, not yet but soon inshaALLAH. I hate departure, I hate leaving people and I feel worse if people leave me. I feel more painful if someone leaves me but less if I am leaving others. I don't know why. Maybe it's because I feel an emptiness if some I love and care of left me. Maybe it's because when I am leaving, there are more challenges and problems for me to face and think of on my journey and arriving at a new place. Anyway, I know I will soon face another great departure in my life.

I think we can divide departure in my life into two types. The first one is death. That's when my mum left us 8 years ago. That is among the worst time of my life. I can still vividly remember the moment she slipped away from us on the bed at the cancer unit. That is still affecting me everytime I thought about it and soon I know that another departure will come when my grandma is going to leave us soon. She is now in the hospital. She didn't wake up since Friday but her heart rate, blood pressure and respiration are all normal. The doctor said she will not live long and I am gutted that I won't be able to see her now. She is very old and has been through a very tough life. This is what makes her strong and she manages to endure the pain and illness for these many years. For her to depart from this world in a peaceful and painless manner, I think it is the best for her. No one is particularly sad at home because it is really a good way for her to go. I hope that in her heart she believes in one God and attains salvation in the hereafter.

The second type of departure is leaving a place forever or move to live in a different place. This happens to me twice. First was when I moved from my hometown to pursue my first degree in another town. I had to get a plane to travel there. I didn't feel sad at all but just exciting. It's only the first night at the hostel that I finally cried by myself missing home. After that, there were just so many things happened that I didn't have the time to think anything else. My second time was when I left Malaysia to do my PhD here in Cambridge. It was sad when I know that I am going to leave the people that I love. Tears bursted out not out of sadness but fear that I won't be able to see them again. I didn't feel sad when I arrived here because of so many problems and difficulties that I have to face here when I have arrived. My friends sent me off at the Senai airport and I travelled alone to Kuala Lumpur and to London Heathrow. Upon my arrival at Heathrow airport, a sister whom I have never met before picked me up to her house, gave me some useful culterly and sent me off to a bus stop at Guildford and caught a coach to Cambridge. Here, two brothers picked me up from the bus station and sent me to New Hall.

I know soon I will be facing another one. I don't know how am I going to face this one. I keep telling myself that it's just another departure and inshaALLAH I'll come back to see my friends again here in the future. But that doesn't help to make me feel any better. Inevitably I will feel sad for losing people that I love but I think there is a lesson to learn. A friend gave me this message:

When God takes something from your grasp, He is not punishing you, but merely opening your hands to receive something better. The will of God will never take you where the Grace of God will not protect you.

What I need to do is to look forward for things that are coming, for there is God's Grace there. Of course, I will not forget the good memories of those who I have left. Friendships and sisterhood is something that I treasures that most. There is no way that I will want to break the ties but I know that to keep the ties as tight as I am here will not be possible when I have left. People always say friendship is forever, it's true in some sense but the intensity will never be the same forever. Another lesson that I have learnt from all these departures are that if we are talking about forever, there will never be a 'forever' for the matters of this World and with humans. The only eternity is ALLAH. Probably, the lesson to draw from departures is that we come to the conviction that ALLAH is the only one that will stay forever, be there for us forever and will never leave us forever. No matter how much we love someone or other loves us, they can't stay with us forever, if not mobility at least death. ALLAH in the first place has not been given life and of course HE will not die, so HE is the only being that will stay forever and ultimately the closest to us. Hence, the ultimate love for a human is to ALLAH, if one is to attain true happiness.

Oh ALLAH, The Eternal, fix my heart, my love and myself to YOU so that I won't be sad on every departure in my life again, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful.

ALLAHU'alam.

Wassalam.