A friend of mine died today

By Laila Muhammad | Last updated: Oct 2, 2014 - 8:19:33 PM

“The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.” ~Mark Twain

“Our death is not an end if we can live on in our children and the younger generation. For they are us, our bodies are only wilted leaves on the tree of life.” ~Albert Einstein

A friend of mine died today. As I looked through hundreds of his pictures on Facebook, as I read hundreds of his Tweets from Twitter, and flipped through Instagram photos, it reminded me about just how real death is, how close we are all to it. It brought me back to memories of him sitting at my dining room table often, breaking down the science of the deportation of the moon, and the mathematics of Islam. He always complimented my bean soup, even those times when I knew it was a little salty.

We shared stories of our teenage daughters, longing for the boy crazy phase to end, and me assuring him that it will never end.

He and my former husband were friends. Not the type of friends that you happen to have a conversation with at the mosque, or the one you run into at a church outing, or even the ones you bump into at the local grocery store and spend 10 minutes in the aisle with just catching up. No they were genuine friends—the ones that could borrow money, stay at each other’s homes for hours, or stay up and talk until two in the morning ’cause one had an epiphany or just a good idea and your friend was the first person you wanted to tell.

So, undoubtedly, that made him my friend.

We discussed how to make the perfect bean pie, to how to decipher the science in the mathematical language of the scriptures.

T’Lisa Muhammad speaks kind words as friends, family, and Believers come to the burial site to show their respect and give condolences to his family.

His death hit me hard. Though, since my leaving St. Louis, I would only see him at major events, we would fight through the crowds of 50,000 people just to have a cup of coffee and catch up on life. Though his death was unexpected, it still hit me like a Mack truck. It showed me just how precious life is, how to not take one moment for granted. So the night I found out I called my ex-husband and we talked about the good times we had with our friend.

I kissed my children a little more that night, hugged my husband a little tighter, and thanked God a little more for life.

The silly fights, disagreements, and petty differences I had with friends or family seemed so minuscule that I felt terrible for wasting such precious time and energy on them. So I called all those people close to me and simply said, I’m sorry, I love you, and please forgive me for whatever wrong I may have caused you.

Though a friend of mine died, and it hurts like hell to even try to begin to express the sadness, I’m finding so much meaning in life now. My best friend died when she was 14, my brother when he was 21, my grandmother at 40, and a friend to us all at just 45. The scripture says that no man knows the hour or time of his death, so I’m praying that each moment we have on this Earth that we make something of it.

In the words of the French novelist Marcel Proust, “People do not die for us immediately, but remain bathed in a sort of aura of life which bears no relation to true immortality but through which they continue to occupy our thoughts in the same way as when they were alive. It is as though they were traveling abroad.” I sure hope so.

May Akbar Shareef Muhammad rest in peace and may Allah (God) be pleased with his soul. May his wonderful and beautiful children know that he loved them more than words can explain, and may those lives he touched be forever grateful and thankful to have been surrounded by such brilliance, grace and kindness. We should all be so lucky to have a friend like this.

(Laila Muhammad is a Chicago-based videographer, writer and Final Call production assistant. Follow her @liberatedvoices.blogspot.com).

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