My beloved mom, I started penning this piece within the first month after your passing.
I gathered my phrases and my ache to pour into this textual content, however my tears would choke me, and I’d shut the file.
I got here again to it two months later, then six, then once more on the finish of the yr, however I nonetheless couldn’t end it.
Every time I returned to it, I carried new burdens, new grief, and new tears because the warfare wove itself into our lives, including sorrows.
One time, I opened the file crying, between pleasure and heartbreak, with information you had waited so lengthy to listen to: A ceasefire had been introduced. However you have been now not there, and I closed the file that day, too.
Now, I collect my energy to put in writing this on the primary anniversary of your demise.
Eulogising our family members is just not a selection, it’s a type of preservation.
A warfare with out your prayers
Are you able to think about, Mama – the warfare stopped, solely to return with much more pressure?
Immediately marks 570 days of it.
The killing, bombing, and displacement weren’t sufficient for them. Now, individuals are dying from starvation.
How can I clarify that, as a lot as I miss you, I’m relieved you don’t must see these unimaginable days?
In our household residence within the north, there’s solely half a bag of flour left. They guard it fearfully and attempt to make it final. The canned meals is working out, and the battle to search out meals is day by day.
I can think about your agony for those who have been calling us now, worrying that we’re ravenous.
Many have starved to demise, and 1000’s are lining up at charity kitchens and communal meals stations. The crossings have been closed for over two months, with meals, drugs, support – all banned by Israel.
Mama, my tears defeat me usually, my worry that this warfare will go on even longer with out your prayers, your fixed prayers for our security and safety, which I say on daily basis now.
Life is difficult, and whereas some issues could be endured, warfare and not using a mom’s prayers appears particularly insufferable.
Mama, I went to our household residence within the north. The entire home was burned, shattered – besides your room, your garments, your issues.
We gathered them and maintain them like treasures that also carry your scent. We prioritise them in case, God forbid, now we have to flee once more.
Maram and her mom within the background along with her sister Mayar and Maram’s daughter, Banias, within the foreground, in September 2021, two years after her mom’s analysis with pulmonary fibrosis (Maram Humaid/Al Jazeera)
Just lately, I’ve been serious about your final days within the ICU, how I struggled to remain on my toes, distracting myself with work.
However that was a false escape. That is the conclusion of a yr of grief.
Sickness, displacement, and loss in warfare
My mom handed away on Could 7, 2024.
That morning, we woke as much as pictures of tanks storming the Rafah border crossing because the Israeli assault on Rafah began. The a technique out of Gaza was blocked; we have been trapped.
Then, like a thunderbolt amid the darkness of that day, got here the information of my mom’s demise in Egypt, 5 months after her medical evacuation there.
We wept, for her and since we, like 1000’s of others, have been paying the worth for merely present on this besieged land.
We have been denied a ultimate farewell to the one we cherished. Denied a funeral, denied burial, denied condolences. All we might do was weep and pray.
My mom suffered from pulmonary fibrosis, a extreme respiratory sickness. She wanted an oxygen pump, an electrical one, which meant any energy outage was life-threatening.
Since October 7, it felt like we have been dwelling by way of a number of wars. Electrical energy was lower off at first of the warfare, mills progressively stopped working, and the healthcare system was collapsing.
We moved her round in Gaza Metropolis, from our household residence to my brother’s home, then to my aunt’s.
No matter relentless Israeli strikes, she wanted the identical factor: a spot on the bottom flooring and a dependable energy supply, like photo voltaic panels. However simply as she settled, Israeli orders would come, expelling folks to the south.
So we went to my grandfather’s home in Deir el-Balah, central Gaza. We teased my father that he had made a “strategic” determination marrying somebody from the south – in any other case, our displacement would’ve been even more durable.
However the bombs adopted us. An expulsion order was issued for a home subsequent to my uncle’s and we ran, carrying the oxygen tank and propping my mom up.
The crises got here one after one other: contaminated water that damage her kidneys, a scarcity of gasoline to prepare dinner for her, medicines working out, then we ran out of electrical energy for her oxygen pump.
She would battle by way of nights when the electrical energy was out, attempting to breathe till the solar rose and the photo voltaic panels might work.
The oxygen tank turned my brother’s and my day by day companion – we took it to Al-Aqsa Hospital to refill till the hospital introduced it had no gasoline and will now not function its oxygen stations.
The one resolution was for Mama to depart Gaza by way of the affected person journey lists – any method attainable.
Mayar within the ambulance along with her mom (Maram Humaid/Al Jazeera)
We did every thing to get her title on the record, with my sister Mayar as her companion, and miraculously, it labored and he or she left on December 6, 2023 – in an ambulance with a allow to cross the border.
I mentioned goodbye to my mom, and that was the final time I noticed her. I cried that day, because the ambulance drove away, worrying it is perhaps the final time.
We didn’t realise that sickness wasn’t her best enemy – it was the worry and psychological torment attributable to the warfare.
In each name after she reached Egypt, her face and voice have been pale and shaky, the results of numerous failed makes an attempt to succeed in us on account of community outages that lasted days.
We tried to inform her to not fear, that we have been alive.
However asking a mom to disregard her overwhelming worry for her youngsters and grandchildren dwelling by way of genocide is not possible. She spent her days glued to the information, grilling my sister for information, particularly about Deir el-Balah.
For her, I’d sneak as much as the hospital’s roof to get some community on my eSIM, disguise behind water barrels close to the damaging japanese border, and message my sister: “We’re OK. Inform Mama we’re OK.”
And her voice would come again like a lifeline to a drowning soul, thanking God and begging us to watch out.
She would inform me to not go to the hospital, to not put myself in peril.
We walked lengthy distances to hook up with the web close to a hill by the ocean, shifting left and proper to catch a sign simply to ship the identical message: “We’re OK, Mama. Don’t fear.”
We’d ship her footage, and when the sign was robust sufficient, we did voice calls.
However the world round my mom in Egypt moved in a single route, whereas she moved in one other – her coronary heart, thoughts, and soul nonetheless right here with us.
Survival drenched in worry
It wasn’t the sickness that killed my mom, it was heartbreak, distance, and fear that exhausted her and stole her will to dwell.
My mom died with just one want in her coronary heart: That the warfare would finish, and he or she would see us once more, alive and secure. However demise was nearer than that not possible want.
Mama, in a number of months, the warfare will enter its second yr, and it solely grows extra brutal.
The times have change into heavier in your absence.
Day by day I stood earlier than the our bodies of victims on the hospital, watching folks break down on the information of their family members’ deaths. I watched their tears, their screams, their ultimate goodbyes.
Kin of Palestinian little one Hasan Munir Hamad, who was killed by the Israeli military when it attacked Beit Hanoon, carry his shrouded physique for burial in Jabalia on Could 6, 2025 (Ramez Habboub/Anadolu Company)
Generally, I envied them, they not less than bought to say goodbye, as my coronary heart wept for them and with them.
Mama, we, the tormented on this land, are in a free-for-all pageant of demise.
Yesterday, Mama, they bombed a college filled with displaced folks. In a second, they killed greater than 30 folks.
The world has grown used to our mass deaths on dwell broadcast. However who mentioned we’ve gotten used to it?
Mama, there isn’t any relaxation, not today, and never in these to return.
How can we proceed dwelling once we are dying slowly? The one factor that comforts us is that those that have gone are lastly at peace.
That demise, as merciless as it’s, is extra merciful.
Mercy to your soul.
And endurance to our hearts.
Sleep in peace, in consolation and security.
