Living Purposefully and Dying Prepared

Nearly eight years ago, I found myself at the hospital awaiting the results of my biopsy. I remember thinking that I shouldn’t be in this waiting area, in this department, with the word cancer leaping out at me from everywhere. Everything felt as if it were spinning.  

Less than an hour later, I had a cancer diagnosis.

In my work in the field of healthcare, I regularly deal with cancer patients as well as palliative and end-of-life patients, so I fully understood the impact of those words. Nevertheless, my first thought was that all praises are due to Allah in all circumstances. Indeed, to Allah we belong and to Him we will return.

My treatment started straight away and consisted of nine long and painful months of chemotherapy, loneliness, uncertainty, highs, lows, twists and turns. It was absolutely agonising.

When the chemotherapy finished, I was given the news that the cancer had cleared, alhamdulillah! However, some time later my close friend of twenty years, Mariama, was diagnosed with incurable and metastatic cancer.

In the months following her devastating diagnosis, we made her funeral arrangements. Every week I called her to remind her to focus on the hereafter, to do deeds that would benefit her in this life and the next, to busy her tongue with the remembrance of Allah – through prayer, supplication, seeking forgiveness and taking care of the company she kept. For two years, I helped her prepare mentally and spiritually for the day that she knew was waiting for her.

It was in those two years that I came to realise that I myself had not prepared anything for my meeting with my Lord. I felt like a hypocrite. For two years, I was preaching what I did not practise. I had advised Mariama to have her will ready and to be able to cover the cost of her funeral, yet I did not have those things in place.

Seeing Mariama leave this world and return to her Lord was a wake-up call for me that death can come at any time to any one of us. Was I ready to meet my Lord? Of course not.

Now I have turned the page in search of a new life, a new chapter, in which I have started packing for the final journey – preparing for the meeting with my Lord and my eternal stay in the hereafter. As a result, I am finding that I am living my life more purposefully.

I have also trained as an end-of-life companion and I see that so many people are unprepared for death and dying from a physical, spiritual, emotional and practical point of view.

My aim is to help us all have more open conversations about death and dying so that we are prepared in every aspect for when it reaches us; for us to embrace it so that we do not fear it and, as a result, live the full, rich life that Allah put us on the earth to live.

My brand new book – Packing for Your Final Journey – will help you do just that. You can check out your copy here.