HEIGHT OF GRIEF

BY: Fatima Iqbal
There comes a moment in life when grief stops being a word and becomes a living, there comes a point, an invisible line, where grief reaches its peak. It is a moment where the weight of the loss is so unbearable that even breathing feels like betrayal. At this peak, sounds blur into silence, faces fade into shadows, and all that remains is the echo of an absence that cannot be filled. Your body feels numb, yet your soul is drowning; memories come rushing back, but each one pierces deeper than the last. It is as if the ground beneath you has collapsed, and you are falling endlessly, desperately searching for something to hold on to but there is nothing. And the worst part is you start questioning your existence. You feel like time has paused but it hasn’t. The sun still dares to rise again; nights become sleepless, restless.
The height of grief isn’t just crying until your lungs burn; it is actually sitting in a room full of people and still feeling unbearably alone. It’s when you start searching the one you lost in every person on the roadside. It’s waking up every day and forgetting for a split second they are not anymore with you. It’s hearing their name in a conversation and feeling your heart splinter all over again. The height of grief is not just sadness; it is the breaking point where pain becomes almost unbearable, where loss turns into a storm that lives inside your chest. It is not the first tear that falls, nor the first night you cry yourself to sleep. It is the moment when you realise that the absence is permanent, that no amount of calling out will bring them back, that the world you once knew has been torn apart forever.

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This reflection I wrote about wasn’t imagined, but it is a reflection born from a grief that felt too heavy for words the grief of a mother who had spent her entire life full of sacrifices and love only so that her son could grow up successful and would have a life that sounds perfect. Just when the mother’s world felt complete, her son succeeded, he started a family, and the mother saw everything she longed for in her son’s life. Fate intervened, and everything shattered in moments. Loss, as always, came without any warning. Her son and his wife passed away in a tragic car accident, and the mother was left with a life full of sorrow and her little granddaughter.
Know, dear reader, this is the story that shattered my heart even though I wasn’t even familiar with them until I heard the story flooding the internet. Now just imagine the height of grief the mother. Because you know,
At its peak, grief is not just an emotion; it is an earthquake of the soul, shaking everything you thought was steady, leaving you numb, hollow, and searching for breath in a world that no longer feels like home. At the peak of grief, when our heart is split open, when our knees eventually give out, we whisper with trembling hands, we whisper something we ungrateful, sinful believers should never whisper: why Allah, just why, why me? Because Ya Rabb, we are not questioning your divine power or decisions; we are just asking why did you let us love them so deeply? Why did you let our souls get deeply entangled for theirs where separation was written from the very start? Why did you let us remember the way they knocked on the door, the way the warmth of their touch lingers on us?
Because Ya Rabb, these fragile hearts, these fragile aching hearts, they cannot understand and know the grief has become so unbearable that we don’t know whether to smile over the memories we shared or cry over it. Perhaps you know, readers, why Allah allows us to feel the height of grief? Not to break us but to remind the depth of love He has put in our not-so-strong hearts. Every tear we shed is proof that He gave us the ability to love someone so deeply that their absence is now the most hollow thing ever. And in moments like these, when we ask Allah why, Allah makes us understand that no bond is eternal except the bond He shares with His believer.
In moments like these, He makes His believers realise that He is always with us, close, near, even nearer than the jugular vein. That tells us that even though the height of grief is a mountain which is too hard to carry, we should still not think of it as a punishment but rather a gift that Allah trusted our souls to love so deeply and then, most importantly, He trusted us that my servant will come back to Me when he has been hit by the reality of this temporary world.
So though this grief feels endless, at the end it is the doorway back to our Creator. Every bond we cherish is a reminder we cherish here is only a glimpse of the eternal love waiting for us. And remember one thing, readers: at last, Inshallah, we will be reunited in the best of places where grief cannot reach.

آگے آتی تھی حال دل پہ ہنسی
اب کسی بات پر نہیں آتی
nothing now could even make me smile,
I once made fun at my own helplessness
(Mirza Asadullah Ghalib after death of his son)