To be loved

Can you share a positive example of where you’ve felt loved?

It is to feel relief, comfort, and safe when crying into your beloved’s arms.

One day, just after the lockdown, I was walking home from school with my daughter. As we neared the end of a shortcut side road, I glanced at someone walking with a small child, about three years old. I immediately recognised the child as my new friend’s son, and guessed the person with him was his father. After brief greetings, the man asked if I knew his wife.

‘Yes,’ I replied looking down at the child, feeling uncomfortable. No one had ever stopped me on the road to ask whether I knew his wife before. If it werent for the child I was looking at, I would have ignored the man.

‘She died,’ said the man, and my head snapped towards him. Shocked, I remained silent wondering whether what I had just heard was correct.

‘Because of COVID,’ he added, and I stood there, still, all the convenient words ran out of my mind.

He added a few sentences, I didn’t hear and I didn’t want to hear.

‘May Allah rest her soul, and make Eden her eternal home.’ I finally said and walked away from him, clasping  my daughter’s hand tight.

‘What he was telling you, Mama,’ my daughter asked as she always found it hard to understand different dialicts of Arabic.

‘Will tell you later,’ I told her as we hurried toward our house.

I knew my daughter guessed what he said, because the word died was clear and harsh as he said it. We went home, and my daughter ran to her room. I knew she did’t want to know anything about the man or what he said.

There, my eldest son had just come home, and after one look at my face, he knew something was wrong. My tears flooded down my face as I leaned against his shoulder.

‘I can’t believe she died …I had …  known her … for … a few months … and her children …. they are … still young.’ I wept and wept, and my son listened, patting my shoulder until I had no more tears to shed.

‘But her husband had no sense. I just want to punch him in the face. How could he just throw that heartbreaking news at someone he doesn’t know, and on the road.’

‘Yes, Mama, but now you’re better.’

Can anything else be better than crying into your beloved’s arms?

With all the best wishes,

Nahla