Grief does not cease when it should, or when it is expected to. It doesn't bow to your will. It hides and disguises itself as contentment, as stress, as hunger. It lets you sleep for a moment or two. It lets you understand that life has gone on and will continue to go on. It lets you do all of these things, and for that you are grateful.

But it returns, and that is okay. It is okay, I tell myself, to have grief, to live with pain. It is okay that making myself a cup of tea hurts because I remember how Amr like three spoons of sugar in a cup. It is okay that I place my head and cheek where he used to sit and wait, just wait to see if something different will happen, or if the couch will absorb some of this love that is going to burst from my chest.

It's fine for things to make perfect sense in one moment, and then feel chaotic and aimless the next.

I remind myself that I am only human, not angel from light, not devil from fire. Just human from the earth. The earth shakes as does my heart, it flips and is flooded and is snowed and rained upon. It is beautiful and frightening. It is never just one thing.

I am never just one thing.

To you who disbelieved at the moment you pointed and shot her baba...

Every time Ruqaya looks at a man on TV or in a book and points to him, saying "baba?" - may God strike in your heart the same pain as my heart is stricken with for my baby.