Muslim burials are fast.
Ali died on a Thursday and we buried him on Friday, the Muslim Sabbath.
“Yes, it’s good.” Ali’s brokenhearted mother mercilessly rubbed the tears from her ruddy cheeks. Her grief seemed to deepen her accent. “There will be a lot of people there for Friday prayers. The more people who do the prayers for the dead, it’s better.”
My heart broke for my mother-in-law. Ali was her only son. Losing my husband was inconceivable enough. Losing my son was beyond imagining.
After Friday prayers, worshippers were invited to stay and join Ali’s family and friends to complete the prayer for the dead. We were not regular mosque goers, so they were all strangers to me.
“Excuse me,” one of the worshippers said to the young man beside him after completing the prayer. “Who is the deceased?”
“His name was Ali Abadi,” Adam, our nineteen-year-old son, told the man. “He was my father.” My son had cried when he first learned his father was dead. Now he mostly seemed shell-shocked, like he was walking around in a haze. Who would guide him into manhood now?
I barely knew how to pray, but I went through the motions with the other women. A wife should be among those to send a man off after he dies. After all, who was closer to him in this life than me?
Maybe his parents and siblings loved him more. Or at least as much. Who knew? How can you quantify such a thing? But I was his day-to-day. His person. After twenty-three years of marriage, Ali and I were embedded in each other’s DNA. If that part of me died with him, who was I now?
In the days after the funeral, the flowers came. From friends and faraway family, from my work and Ali’s colleagues, a couple of arrangements from more distant acquaintances whose kindness was a surprise. The local TV station where Ali occasionally appeared as an on-air financial consultant sent a huge bouquet.
The honeyed fragrance of the flowers, scents of celebrations and epilogues, of comings and goings, quickly enveloped the house. The cloying odor made me nauseous. I didn’t water any of them. I had no interest in keeping alive things that represented death.
About a week after the accident, I was home alone debating what to do with one of the more elaborate arrangements. Adam was at the gym, and Ayla’s friends had come to take her out for lunch. Everything felt surreal, the three of us still in varying states of shock.
Since the funeral, Adam had stuck to the basement playing video games, while Ayla locked herself away in her room. Although my son was quiet, mostly retreating into himself, he was also eager to talk about his father, remembering anecdotes that made us smile despite our devastation. Like the times Ali got technical fouls for yelling at the ref while coaching the kids’ youth basketball teams.
Ali, usually so even keeled, was never as excitable as when he was coaching. Seeing his unlikely transformation on the sidelines always made us laugh. Well, it amused me after the fact. While it was happening, I was embarrassed from where I sat among the other parents.
Ayla’s reaction to losing her father was vastly different. She’d completely withdrawn, rarely coming out of her room. So far, she didn’t want to talkabout Ali. Friends and family had delivered several meals that she barely touched. My heart wrenched whenever I recalled how she’d reacted when I told her about the accident. She ran to the bathroom and threw up. Afterward, she slumped on her bed hugging herself, shaking uncontrollably. “It isn’t true,” she’d moaned. “It can’t be.”
Ayla had always been a daddy’s girl, in many ways closer to her father than she was to me. She wouldn’t let me hold or comfort her. I told myself grief takes different shapes. That I should let Ayla process her loss in her own way. After all, it had only been a few days since Ali’s death.
Besides, I was barely coping myself. Mostly I was numb, like a stranger watching my life unfold from the outside looking in. I didn’t feel much of anything from that safe distance. Nothing could hurt me so badly that I couldn’t go on. Despite the fuzzy feeling in my mind, I knew instinctively that I had to keep it moving for the kids. Falling apart wasn’t an option.
Now, as I studied the floral arrangements, the doorbell rang. Probably more bouquets being delivered. Or food or another thoughtful gift.
My next-door neighbor Claudia, who I walked with a few mornings a week, had already sent over a lasagna. And the Goldmans, who lived across the street, left a generous bag of groceries on the doorstep. I was lucky to have so many caring people in my life. Nicki, my closest friend, set up a meal calendar that would keep us fed for the next month. My high school bestie, Rula, sent an enormous bouquet and way more food than we could eat from my favorite restaurant.
I sighed. How was any of this real? The night the officers came to tell me that Ali was dead, I was positive they were wrong. It had to be a case of mistaken identity. Ali’s Honda was in the shop the night he died. He was driving a loaner car from the dealership when he crashed. Surely that had confused authorities. I still waited to hear the jiggle of his key in the lock when he came home from work.
The doorbell rang again, rattling me out of my thoughts. I found two uniformed officers on my doorstep. Fear streaked through my limbs. My legs almost buckled. The last time police showed up at the house turned out to be the worst night of my life.
“Mrs. Abadi?”
“Yes.” I could barely choke out the words. “Has something happened? Is it the kids?”
“No, no. Nothing like that. I apologize for alarming you.” He was short and square shaped with a full head of dark hair. He looked like someone who laughed a lot, so his current somber expression seemed out of place on such a jovial face. The other officer was taller, thinner. I barely noticed him.
“I’m Officer Torres with county police,” the shorter man continued. “And this is Officer Bailey. We’re wrapping up our investigation into your husband’s traffic accident. We have a few questions for you.”
“What could I possibly know? I wasn’t there when he ... crashed.”
The officer smiled reassuringly. “Would you mind if we come in? This won’t take long.”
I showed them into the living room, the formal space near the front door where we rarely sat except for when guests were over. Flower arrangements littered almost every available surface, giving the room a funereal feel.
“All traffic accidents in the county are investigated,” the officer began once we were seated. “In your husband’s case, there were no tire marks at the scene.”
“I see.” I blinked and tried to focus. My mind tended to wander these days. “What does that mean?”
