You, Alone. ✅

Chapter 36 (Epilogue)

Ammarah's POV

It will be okay- Shawn Mendes

I looked at the set of people that are now looking at me, all wide eyed. Some clutching their hands and some blinking away tears.

Even I know I'm crying. Rayyan's health was the most sensitive part of my life. I don't talk about it often, I don't even say it at all. It's better that it is kept away.

But standing here and talking to them, talking to people who understand was liberating. They know it, they understood it perfectly.

Not having cancer, but loving someone who does.

That's a topic that is never broached on after all. Everybody hurts for the person with cancer, the one that survived it and the one that didn't. Yet no one asked who loved them? Who adored them? Where are they? How are they coping? How did it feel like? To watch someone you love leave? To see the person you love fade piece by piece? How painful must it have been? How?

I took a deep breathe and said "Loving Rayyan was the most beautiful thing I've ever come to experience. Rayyan at the hospital will always say he came into my life, made me love him and now he will leave. He hated himself for it"

I looked at the faces that look back at me "But do you remove your hand because your finger hurts you? Do you stop breathing because you have flu? I don't even know what words to use in describing it but I know you know. Every one seated here knows how much worth it— it is to love them. To stick by them and be there for them, it must have meant something. It must have been worth something"

Someone handed me a tissue and I thanked them then dabbed at my eyes "Through the storm and chaos of everything, I didn't really see the whole thing. We were living moment by moment. If we get through a moment either good or bad, we live in it and await the other. But now looking back, it is a whole story on its own. Before him, meeting him and loving him. And I swear, even for a split second I won't change it for anything. I won't change a single thing about my relationship with Rayyan.

It was perfect for me, it was perfect for us. With all its scars and the wounds we've bandaged. Like Rayyan said, if you love someone for the sake of Allah, Allah makes it easy for you to love them. There are moments that will be hard but loving them won't.

I now know how much love I have in me. I see it in everything and everyone. I fall in love with the trees, the stars, flowers, sunset, the moon, the birds, smell of incense. When I use to hate my life and the family I was in, now I love them ever so fiercely.

I have moments where life holds me and tries to drown me. Where days are like gloomy clouds that moves heavily. I have them, I have bad moments.

But on the good days, boy do I live!

On the good moments, I embrace them wholeheartedly. I create and schedule joy pleasantly. I do things full of love for myself and my family. I let laugher echo and peace run through the walls of our home. It is a whole journey of being grateful and appreciating the life and moment Allah has given us.

It is a whole journey"

I finished my speech before realizing i may have been talking for too long and spewing things I shouldn't have. But the instant the thought came in, it went back because I felt good. It felt good saying all those things. It felt immensely good.

The crowd stood up and clapped and I walked down the stage then went straight to my chair. The woman next to me leaned in and smiled then said "I am also living"

I leaned back into my seat and watched as the next person came on stage to tell their own story.

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I walked into my home with a quiet "Assalamu alaikum". Closed the door, kept my bag and sat on the couch resting my head.