Life During Lockdown Part 4: Gone, But Never Forgotten
By FANILA MUKHTAR with JESSICA ABRAJAN
On Friday, April 10, at 11:31 a.m, my mother received a Facetime call and watched her beloved aunt take her last few breaths.
Sarwar Jaan was her name. She was a kind soul who believed in the importance of family, with five children and 16 grandkids of her own, as well as many others who saw her as a mother figure. Words cannot describe the role she fulfilled in our lives.
My grandaunt Sarwar had these piercing brown eyes. Her thin lips always wore a smile, and her grey hair pulled her fair complexion together. Although she had a warm, loving demeanor, she kept to herself most of the time. She lost her father at a young age and kept that heartache with her through most of her life. She never completely got over it.
Throughout her life she faced many hardships. She moved from her homeland to Birmingham in May 1976 with her husband and created a life for herself from scratch. She lived a humble life but had a big heart and was always giving back. She was a devoted Muslim who was passionate about providing education for orphans and building mosques in third world countries.
One of my strongest memories of her is of when her brother (my grandfather) was on his deathbed and the whole family gathered. Although it was a sad moment, it just felt right to be there together. She was there to console everyone and told us all the stories of their childhood. She reminded us that though he might not live on, our memories of him were eternal. I also remember spending all of summer in 2015 with her in Birmingham; it was the holy month of Ramadan, and we packaged food to distribute to the less fortunate.
Before my grandaunt’s passing, I remember hearing about all the deaths due to COVID-19 in my community, and I thought how hard it would be to mourn the death of a loved one, knowing that you can’t give them a proper burial or even grieve like normal with your family. That reality was closer to me than I thought.
In the few days leading up to Sarwar’s death, she and my mom would talk on the phone for hours. She had open heart surgery a few years back, but other than that she had no pre-existing health conditions. She left for the hospital on Wednesday, April 8, because she was having trouble breathing. When she was leaving in the ambulance, she started saying goodbye to all her grandkids, and it became very sentimental. Her son, Dr. Arshad Mehmood, spoke hopefully and told her she’d be home before she knew it, but in her heart, I think she knew what was coming for her. She wasn’t showing any symptoms of the virus, but on Thursday night, the doctors decided to test her for COVID-19, and the test came back positive.
Her condition took a turn for the worse on Friday, April 10. She refused the use of a ventilator. According to my mom, “Sarwar believed that if it was her time to go, not even a ventilator could stop it.” She was on oxygen for most of the day, but then around 11:30 a.m., she passed away. Her son could only watch through the doors of the hospital room.
“I couldn’t even hold her,” he said. “I watched them cart her away like just another body.”
Her husband and two of her sons couldn't be there because they were in self-isolation after recently returning from travel outside of the country.
Even though she had already passed away, the next few days proved to be even harder. When a Muslim passes away, it is the responsibility of the family to wash the body, also known as the Ghusl Mayyit. This was performed by hospital workers. Muslims are also buried in a special white coffin, and my grandaunt had bought one from the holy city of Mecca. The hospital workers were nice enough to wrap her body in one of the sheets, but it was still a sad scene. It took around three days for a death certificate to be issued. The funeral arrangements she had wished for were not able to be carried out. Due to the limited amount of graves available, her body was held in a refrigerator for six days.
“Those six days were the hardest for me,” said her niece Fakhra Mukhtar, “knowing she hadn’t been put to rest. It felt like the world stopped moving. I had the financial means to hop on a plane to Birmingham, but I was stopped by the travel restrictions due to the virus.”
Sarwar Jaan was buried on Friday, April 17. Only three people were allowed at the burial site: two of her sons and the imam from a nearby mosque. The funeral was live streamed on Twitch to the rest of the mourners.
“It was sad that my mom, who adored doing everything with her family, would have her final service in front of only her two sons,” said Samina Jaan. “She had five kids. It was sad knowing we couldn't share those final moments and grieve together as a family.”
The death of a loved one certainly puts a drastic burden on a family. It plays a big role with your mental and even physical health. Even though COVID-19 death tolls are currently decreasing, many of us are losing people, and it will stick with you. The world will move on, and the virus will be gone one day, but I’ll always have that void in my life. My family has been left with feelings of distress, pain, sadness, anger, guilt, shock, and even despair.
These deaths due to the virus hurt even more because we are not able to grieve with our families. My memories of my grandaunt will be eternal, but we didn’t get to feel the closure of burying her together, hand in hand. It is especially during times of loss that human contact is most important, and the loss of that contact during this pandemic will haunt us long after COVID-19 has faded from memory.