Thursday, November 28, 2019

Celebrating Grief

Every year, there are less days to celebrate and more to recognize as “Americans” and I put that in quotes because many of us are trying to reconfigure what that means today. As a Syrian born on stolen Tongva land, I struggle to celebrate. For many of us, especially those of us coming from immigrant backgrounds, Thanksgiving is not necessarily a day of celebration, but a day of gathering. At home, that’s what it always was with dad. I recently posted a memory shared from Facebook, from seven years ago today, when dad and I spent a post-dinner conversation that meant the world to me.

Thanksgiving Day was a day of sports viewing, of cooking, of snacking, of online browsing, of random conversations, and of Syrian desserts with tea. Seven years ago it also included literary discussions, my blog, and my dad’s faith in my art as a writer. As hard as some have anticipated today would be on us, it was more weird honestly; and though I planned on making this week’s post about the concept of life support, I bookmarked it for next week and let today focus on the celebration of memories as a part of the grieving process. On understanding the temporariness of all things as a part of life.

As kids, we knew, if a Lakers game was on, 🤫 🤫 🤫. Dad legit assumed coaching duties on the couch and reprimanded every player through the T.V. when he didn’t “pass the ball!” or “shoot! shoot it, c’mon!!!” Listen, my youngest brother, Karim, was named after Kareem Abdul Jabbar. That’s how hardcore my dad was. He got mama in on it and there’s that story. It’s still too painful to process, though it hits in sporadic crashes. I’m just trying to remember we’re each on this earth for a certain time period, to lay the bricks down for a certain purpose. When we accomplish that purpose, our time is complete here. My dad must’ve completed everything he was on this earth to do and God said, “It’s time.” I look around me, at the life he built for us all, at the skills he taught us knowingly and unknowingly, at the genetics and love we inherited, at the connections and support he offered so many people in the world, then I know. I am reminded, God’s timing means everything and soon enough mine will be up. Once I finish all I’m here to do, however long it’s meant to take, and then I will be in dad’s arms again.

In Islam, the belief is a human is built of components. The core is the soul, known as nafs in Arabic. The soul houses the spirit or spirituality, which is essentially a connectivity and sensation. However, on this earth, a soul cannot exist without a physical manifestation, and hence, the human body. I never actually saw the body so clearly as a vessel for the soul until I saw my dad’s body in its five month disintegration. When I saw him fall into three separate comas, the last being the finale—despite a racing heart rate that I felt with my shaking palm.

The last intense hug he ever gave me, we cried our eyes out and maybe it’s because our souls somehow knew this would be it. His time was up, and as sad as that is for our hearts to digest—because we yearn for who we love—trying to frame things in their temporariness in life makes parts of it a little easier to swallow.
Until our times are up and we are reunited with our lost loves, we have work to do on this earth for ourselves and our communities. This is how we serve and fulfill. Sometimes we don’t even know what our callings or missions are but when we finish them, we are summoned back. Sometimes we know exactly why we are here and it makes the temporary time we have on earth even more worthwhile. Seek out your missions if you have not yet found them and seek out the good company to nurture your soul’s spirit in the meantime. It makes the journey a little more livable too. Celebrate gratitude for what you had and what you had the chance to experience, not just once a year but all year long, and until then, heal wholly!

Thursday, November 21, 2019

Striking Grief


When I graduated from college, my dad gave me a beautiful necklace—two circles, one inside the other. I’m not big on jewelry (it’s too high maintenance for me) so while I loved it, honestly I didn’t wear it often. I don’t remember what I was talking to him about one day at the hospital, but I remembered the necklace and brought it with me the next day. Whether he recognized it or his post-stroke reception enjoyed the glimmer of the silver, gold, and diamonds, his eyes were fixated. The problem? It sat in my jewelry box so long it got tangled up in so many knots. I realized that was a major reason why I didn’t wear it. So I pulled up a chair beside his bed, propped a pillow up for him to see, and got to work, determined to untangle the gift he gave me.

Without pause, he kept his gaze on my fingers, diligently working. About an hour later, after squinting, grunting, and somehow creating then undoing more knots, it came loose. The chain was free and ready to be worn. I held it up, beaming with pride, like it ironically represented my efforts to get the degree I initially received when he gifted me the necklace. As the embracing circles hung between us, both our eyes watching them sway, I chuckled. “Dad, I just noticed these circles are us, a representation of a dad and daughter bond. You’re the big circle, protecting and giving the little golden circle her foundation to shine.”

Since that day, the necklace hasn’t left my body, and everyday I’d come in, I saw his eyes search for it. Its metaphorical layers weigh heavy around my neck, showing me the nuances of grief. What makes grief so fragile is unlike lightning, it always strikes twice, or more.

On top of literally watching my father leave us, shrinking daily for five months, grief spread itself wide like an ink stain. I don’t have any advice or tidbits to share, just the already shed skins of my grief and the ones I see peeling before me.

My favorite social media post is the one that reminds everyone to be kind because each person fights a battle unseen. What makes being a writer, a blogger, and an author unique, is in fact our visibility. However, that yields the presumption people have that they know all of us so well. Truth of the matter is, even the most vulnerably open of us, have unspoken unshared layers, levels of other grief above our known ones. So today’s post is simply this reminder. Grief is nonlinear, has no concrete timeline, and is not happening in a vacuum. I hope to shed light on what we went through, what we learned, what we are still learning, and how to navigate the trauma. Next week’s post will be more concrete (about life support). So practice kindness, practice silence, practice honesty, and until then, heal wholly!

Thursday, November 14, 2019

Competitive Grief


Competitive grief is no mystery to me. In TWO previous jobs, both my supervisors laughed so hard when I stated I was tired, belittling the possibility that I could be. Oblivious to everything going on in my life—domestic violence, a divorce entirely on my shoulders, four hour DAILY commutes, insomnia, managing side projects, writing a book, applying for a graduate degree, and more. I wasn’t allowed to be tired because I didn’t have children? Because I was under the age of 30 back then? Being single or childless does not make someone less entitled to experience grief, loss, exhaustion or trauma. Having a spouse and/or babies is NOT the only struggle a human can endure.

Now, what I was not familiar with, before my father’s illness, were grief credits, and how they—alongside competitive grief—could take an emotional toll on the immediate family grieving. This post will be more difficult to write than others, not because it’s emotional, but because I know some people may take offense. It’s so hard to express truths today without someone somewhere blowing everything out of proportion, but I’ve been a talkative one since birth. That’s all I ever heard my dad say about me. Every memory he ever shared was about the sassy, straightforward, talkative nature I possessed since the young age of two. He’d talk and his face would light up and I felt indescribably special. Like I knew, no matter what, our foundation was there together. I miss those stories—rather I miss him sharing those stories with me.

It’s been one month now exactly, and I often catch myself replaying his final hours in my head. Watching his body change colors and knowing that as this prism flashed before me, I was losing my dad forever. I don’t know how, but within hours the world was aware of his death, though none of us announced it till the next morning, when we confirmed funeral arrangements. According to Islamic teachings, the sooner a body can be buried, the better. It’s a sign of respect and closure. But somehow, we faced the reprimands. Started having our grief compared, critiqued, and “outdone” by others. This did not entirely surprise me though. It started the moment word got out that he suffered a stroke after the first surgery.

No one should mistake what I’m about to say on my behalf, and on behalf of my immediate family, but it was utterly strange to us that people who were never really there in our times of need, were suddenly beyond eager to impose themselves upon us as supporting roles here. I received messages from people who had previously insulted me and my work, claiming primacy to my heart and emotions. People who literally offered no support on our work for Syria or our publications, were now talking about how far back we go. Instead of focusing my energy on my dying father, I was being hounded to reply to texts from entitled people who said they deserved to visit him or should know every detail about his diagnosis. It was what left me crying more often than not at 3:00 a.m. before I finally fell asleep and woke up to re-live the whole cycle all over again a few hours later.

There’s offering kindness and then there’s straight up ego. I said it before in ‘Stolen Grief” and I’ll say it again; you cannot be absent from people’s times of light and expect to be welcome in their times of darkness. I tried, so hard, to look at it like an overreaching optimist and find gratitude in the “care” that was being offered, but when it drains you, is it genuine care? When you catch that it’s attempts to add grief credits to their social resume, is it authentic?

We had people show up unannounced, telling us that they know we requested no visitation but wanted to impose anyway because they “love” us so much. Every time that happened I cringed and thought, do you hear what you’re saying? It’s about YOU then, not the grievers.

I anticipated it would only get worse if/when daddy died and it did. The people trying to push through to see my dad’s body post-mortem and getting agitated if my crying mother or brother said no. The fact that when it was time to offer the dirt before the grave was closed, somehow my mother and I got marginalized and pushed to the end of the line, while everyone else, unrelated to my dad, was up there pouring dirt and tears over his body. Mama and I were locked elbow to elbow, too frail and broken to fight people for our rightful status. It should’ve been common sense.

Over and over, I kept telling myself, “Share your grief, Dania. Your dad meant a lot to many other people.” But there came a point where it felt like my grief, the grief of his wife and children, was not shiny enough or loud enough so the world felt like it needed to overcompensate. It was hard to separate between authenticity and facade, especially with social media.

I still don’t know how I feel about social media posts commemorating the dead when it’s not immediate family or immediate circles. When Raihan and her beautiful family passed, I refrained from offering anything aside from the news article and prayers. She and her family are buried right beside my dad and it kills my heart. There’s so much emotion to unpack and digest with that concept alone—my father, my friend, her family, and my other friend’s brother, are all buried, not only in the same cemetery, but the same row. Talk about a reminder of the afterlife!

But everyday I see new posts about her and I wonder how the families feel seeing that. Does it give them joy? Does it hurt? Grief is not cookie cutter and I think the biggest takeaway is this: When you want to be there for someone grieving, check yourself first. Why are you inclined to offer what it is you want to offer? What are your intentions? How are they coming across? Reflect on that. If you cannot yet pinpoint the answer, offer the most basic of positive messages and then hold off before offering more.

Do not expect them or ask them to respond. Do not demand information from them. Do not badger them to see you/let you visit. Do not post things without checking with them. Personally, I feel like there’s a certain level of intimacy that exists in grief. It’s a very fine line between sharing grief and knowing when the grief belongs to the immediate circle of the deceased/suffering. To say I know how to thread this fine line would be a lie. I still don’t. I have been guilty of posting things in the past to share in the grief of others, thinking I was part of the collective experience, ignorant to what it may actually be doing. God is teaching me very important lessons now in the death of my dad and I’m listening.

I’m still learning how to share grief but I also learned, quite vividly, how to protect it too. Grief should never be a competition.

Until then, heal wholly.

Thursday, November 7, 2019

Shared Grief


Three weeks ago today, at 6:23 p.m., I watched my dad take his last exhale. His heart rate—reaching a high of 176 that afternoon—suddenly became so faint, the doctors scrambled to get an ultrasound pulse reader to try and find it. I told them there’s no use. I saw him leave us and I slowly backed away and into the chair that became mine for months.

It still hasn’t hit me and some people have told me this type of grief doesn’t kick in till later. I fear that may be true and a part of me has sensed it since the moment he was diagnosed in May. The way my body remained surprisingly tranquil throughout it all scared me. Was this the calm before the storm? And if so, when will this storm strike? And if it does, what will become of me?

Loss has never been my strong suit, but to be honest, the losses I’m referring to are not death. They never have been. They have been relationships ending—a divorce or a breakup or a rejection. They have been jobs that became so toxic I had to leave. They were friendships that ended when I got ghosted. And occasionally, they’ve been files or poems or journals that I eventually learned to move on without. Actually, all of those “things” I eventually learned to move on without. But how do you move on without a father? And how do you navigate through a grief, that for the first time, is not just yours?

When we all gathered around my father’s body—mama, my brother, my uncle, and the two doctors who were my dad’s friends, along with the nurses who became so much like family I miss them all everyday, I realized, unlike every loss before, I am not experiencing this one alone. Suddenly, at age 30, I am re-learning how to share and it’s not easy. How to practice a balance between allowing myself to grieve while also making room for others who are entitled to grieve, to do so as well. There’s no Barney or Blue’s Clues or Elmo for this y’all.

A week later, mama and I were in the car, and I said, “I know this is even harder on you because we as adult children don’t have a status change in this loss, but you’ve become a widow.” Widow. She let the word fall from her lips and said, “Yeah, and I never imagined I’d ever be one, especially not like this.” We started recollecting who else from our community was a widow and remembered that a few of them showed up to dad’s funeral and squeezed her tight. I nudge her to continue connecting with them. Group therapy can be as simple as friendships built on solidarity, as a start.

Then there are my brothers, one who doesn’t live here and landed hours before the funeral, and one who spent a good amount of his time with dad on boys’ nights out his whole life. I’ve seen more of their tears now than ever before and I open my soul for them. I am not a son so I do not know anything more than the loss of a daughter., which means I cannot fathom the pain his parents feel either, and I remind myself that I had to and have to share that grief with them too.

It’s not easy, grief. Add on complicated layers of other things experienced in conjunction with the loss, and it becomes a fiasco that’s left us questioning how we are still standing. But there’s something very powerful about the concept of shared grief that I never got to experience in any of my other losses, and that is the unique sense of not being alone, while still being alone. Bear with me, because these coming posts on grief will unpack a great deal of things that don’t make sense but do, all at once.

Despite the numerous texts I received (and still receive) I feel very alone. I always have in times of loss. It’s hard to reach out and ask someone to listen because even you get tired of hearing about your own pain. Then if you do find the courage to reach out, it’s hard to openly express your pain without the fear of judgment or the fear of having spirituality shoved down your throat. Yes, I know, it sounds awful, but not being able to be angry or question things or not uphold a rose colored lens of optimism in these times is often opposite of what many of us crave in our healing. So it becomes difficult to find the company you can completely let your guard down with.

I sort of found someone. He sort of volunteered. It’s a complicated history with a strange present and a completely unknown future, but it helps. They—his presence and my needs in grief—have taught me how to better share grief and how to better be there for those grieving, especially those I am sharing the grief with.


To share grief is to exercise another level of empathy, which takes a great deal of energy, but comes back just as rewarding. It itself becomes a sense of healing power for you, just as much as it heals those you are sharing with. There will be difficult times, moments when you need your own space, where you feel entitled to a selfish second of not caring about anyone else except your own heart, and that is understandable. Take that second to yourself, letting others around you know you are doing so, and then come back. Remember that you are not entirely alone in this grief. Others are hurting too and your love feeds off each others' because it's not just the grief that you are sharing, it's the healing too.


I feel it when my brother laughs. When we all gather around our cat, Kai, and bombard him with kisses. When we capture mama's snoring. When we find a movie on T.V. we love and make popcorn and escape reality for two hours.

As I tell people, it’s not going to be an easy journey but we have no choice but to go through it. In the meantime, I feel called to share the lessons we learned (and will learn) in this experience because there were and will be things experienced that I hope others do not have to encounter.

Until then, heal wholly.