Personal Narrative-Changing Experience With My Father's Funeral

It all started in 2008 when I had gone through an experience that unfortunately everyone at one point will have to go through. It was the summer of 2008 and it was late at night when my dad received a phone call saying that our close friend wife had been in the hospital for stage four cancer. At the time I didn’t understand what cancer was and what it could do. Later the next day we go to visit her at the hospital. Since my sisters and I were good friends with their children we spent that day playing at the hospital. A few months later my dad received a phone call that would send chills down everyone’s backs. Once my dad told us the horrific news that she had passed away all the playing stopped and the room went silent. The room was so quiet

I stood there thinking about what had happened but I still didn’t understand what happened. My mom wrapped us in our blankets and waited for us to fall asleep while my dad went to the hospital to bring comfort to their family. In the muslim practice it is thought that it is better to bury the body as soon as possible. So my dad spent the rest of his night planning the funeral. The next morning when my dad arrives he tells us to get ready and that we are going to the mosque. In the mosque is where we would pray for forgiveness on the deceased person. At that moment seeing all the people crying and praying I started to understand what has happened. Looking back on that day I haven’t witnessed anything more saddening than the faces of all the people in the mosque. Everyone was either crying or praying and if you were a kid you were either copying your parents or looking for your friends. For the next hour I would sit there talking with one of my friends. We were both trying to figure out what to do. By this time an hour and a half has passed and all the men got up in a simultaneous motion. I stared into the crowd as if it was a big fluffy piece of cotton candy but I was searching for my dad. I had no clue where he