Asra Nomani

An Eyelash and 3 Dandelions In Room 8, my eyelash fell upon my father’s face, resting upon the bridge of his nose, as I held his hand and whispered into his ear, “I love you. I love you. I love you.” I repeated the words he had said in life: “Salam. Shalom. Shanti.” Peace. Peace. Peace. “Salam. Shalom. Shanti.” And, transcending identity, he responded: “Shanti.” Peace. Soon after, my father, Mohammed Zafar Alam Nomani, 93, a man of faith, humanity, humility and love, took his last breath. Through the dark of the night, his son and grandchildren whispered into his ear, his wife of 64 years held the hand that had just months earlier given her three dandelions on the banks of the Monongahela River. There is nothing that prepared me for this sheer loss unimaginable of a father’s breath that had again become my own, just as it had been when I lay upon his belly as a girl, delighting in stories of the kings and queens of India. “Noorjehan,” he told me when I asked which queen he told me about. Bedside these past weeks with my family as my father battled life-threatening pneumonia and lung disease, I inhaled these last weeks beside my father’s ear to guide him to breathe deeply and exhaled softly onto his neck to synchronize our breaths and try to bring him back to good health. These past weeks, my father gave us the gift of being able to serve him as an expression of love. In Room 8, I fell in love again with my father as I had as a girl upon his belly. I learned from the softness of his grandchildren serving him, my niece tucking and retucking his blanket. We knew his white blood cell count and his respirations per minute. We discovered his playful wink. We recited the first chapter of the Quran to remain on the straight path, and I heard him say again and again “Alhamdullilah,” praise be to God, because he had gratitude in even obstacles, as his granddaughter observed in him. With each gesture of care for him, he whispered, “Thank you,” with a beaming smile. I heard him express his mantra: “Think good. Do good.” “Serve humanity.” A a twin who lost his brother soon out of the womb, a child of British colonialism, a survivor of the manmade Bengal Famine of 1943, he taught by example, eschewing grievance and cherishing life. Every moment from our lives together flashes before me. My father who drove me to the Pittsburgh Airport so many times over to allow my wings to fly in this world. Who ferried his son, wife and grandchildren to help them pursue their every dream. My father who drove me to Andrews Air Force Base in the dark of the predawn for me to board a plane to Guantanamo Bay — on a round trip ticket. My father who taught me how to ride a lawn tractor. My father who read my books’ every words and wrote notes in the margins. My friends tell me that experiencing a parents’ death leaves a hole in the heart, shepherding a parent’s care at end of life leaves a trauma invisible and surviving a parent in the normal cycle of life is an unspoken soul-crushing grief. In Room 8, I have confronted very intimately the social reality of a grief even more painful in a society that appears to too often devalue the “elderly,” coax the vulnerable without treatment to unwanted “hospice” or medically-assisted suicide and “slow code” the elderly to death, responding slowly to emergency. We couldn’t save my father but I am keen to investigate the dynamics of ageism that too often become a barrier to treatment. My father always encouraged me to draw lesson for society from suffering. Please write to me or reply with your family’s story? I will strive to honor his life. And thank you for honoring him by absorbing the details of his life, down to the flutter of three dandelions in the wind and the drop of an eyelash upon his skin.

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