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Life works in mysterious ways. King Patterson never really thought about life in depth. He did not care much for his future. He did not plan. There was no use. He would be six feet under today, tomorrow or the day after that. He took each day as...
The drive from A'ishah's halaqah facility to the hospital, although in reality was a mere twenty minute trip, had never seemed so long.
Besides the faint Qur'an recitation flowing from the speakers, the car was eerily silent and neither A'ishah or myself really had anything to say.
I was left alone to battle my thoughts the whole way there. I almost ran two red lights and forgot to stop at a stop sign. A'ishah didn't say anything about my bad driving. She must've known the things that were going through my head.
They were the same things that had been stressing me out for the past two weeks, but today, they were no longer in the back of my head. They were front and centre. Right there. Over and over again I would hear voices recounting possible scenarios, different routes, but all with the same ending...my mum dying.
It was the only possibility I was mentally capable of entertaining right now.
A'ishah hated this habit of mine and no matter how many times she had tried to snap me out of it this past fortnight, she couldn't.
It was a coping mechanism I had built over the years due to constantly being let down by my father. I would get my hopes up that he would come to my basketball matches, but it never happened. I would get my hopes up that he would attend our school concerts, but that never happened. I got my hopes up that he would take my mum out of her mental facility and bring her home to me, but evidently that didn't happen either.
Hell, I even had hope two years ago when I had told him about my graduation, but even then, he had let me down.
Now, I never got my hopes up for anything. Nothing. It was fail proof. Expect the worst. Don't get disappointed. Did it ever lessen the blow? Definitely not.
I was expecting the doctors to deliver bad news today. I was expecting the IV having been useless. I expected my mother's condition to continue deteriorating. I expected her to die. Quickly. Maybe in the next week, or maybe two. Possibly within the month, but no longer than that.
I would be pleasantly surprised if they told me all was well, but my hopes were not high at all.
A'ishah reaches over towards the radio controls and waits until the reciter completes his ayah before switching it to the Islamic radio station instead, the voice of one of the local imams coming through the speakers.
"And you know, SubhanAllah something that goes hand in hand with the point I just made is that although we learn all of these things, they tend to go in one ear and out through the other, may Allah swt guide us. Ikhwaan wa alhawaat, I swear by Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala that most grown, adult Muslims who have been Muslims their whole life still don't know the etiquettes of making du'a. They still don't. Wallahi they still don't." He said.
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