Let me tell you something of faith as a grieving parent.
Everyone reacts differently to tragedy in life- for some they turn away from faith, for others it becomes a lifeline.
I am a woman of faith. My faith has deepened and strengthened through the experience of losing my child. The reasons for this are multifaceted and mostly deeply personal, so I won't go into it in more detail but there is one thing I would like to share about faith and how it helps me reflect on humanity.
On Idrees' last few hours in the world, we were in the PICU at Alder Hey Children's Hospital, in a small private room off the main PICU floor. The ever caring and attentive palliative care team assigned us a private room in order to give us some space and privacy to spend the last few hours of our son's life with him. There weren't many such rooms on that particular floor, although I didn't count them I knew there was a baby in the room next door to Idrees' and a young girl in the room off the other side. When your child is facing death, the details seem to skip past you until you somehow store them and recall them for later. I don't remember much about the other rooms other than small details. There was a Christian priest called in to sit with and bless the baby in the room next door and the young girl's family were playing some devotional Hindu prayers on a soft music player in the room to Idrees' other side. In Idrees' room as we held him in our arms for those last few hours as he made his journey from this world, we had an arabic reading and english translation recording of a chapter from the Qur'an, Surah Yaseen, playing in the background.
It is only on reflection I can properly appreciate the beauty of the moment. The power of the faith that resonated and bounced off the walls off that corner of the PICU that day was stronger than I've ever felt anywhere else in the world. Three different families were using their faith to come to terms with the greatest tragedy that faced them on that day- each adopting a different approach, but ultimately to the same means.
On that day religion wasn't a means to bully or dominate or prove righteousness. It was simply a vehicle for faith that helped three families say goodbye to their most precious little ones.
If you want to truly understand the hope and peace faith can bring, you'll be hard pressed to find it in a war zone or from the words of a preacher at a pulpit. Look in a lonely corner of a children's hospital where death lingers in the air and grief lies thick in the silence- you'll find it there, helping people to make sense of the world.
