(RNS) — Ramadan ended yesterday (March 19) with the celebration of Eid al-Fitr. By the final days of the holy month of fasting and prayer, hunger feels less like a hardship and more like a teacher. It teaches me to be grateful for every morsel of food and every moment of life, and to gain clarity about who I am when I am not trying to be somebody for everybody else.

But a strange tenderness comes over me as Ramadan ends. A month after my father died in March 2021, Ramadan arrived with its familiar discipline: waking before dawn, head bent in prayer, hunger stretching the hours until sunset. I broke my first fast the way his absence broke my heart; quietly, unceremoniously, sitting in silence at the dining table in my small shared apartment in a wintry Chicago neighborhood. 

I have been fasting for Ramadan since I was 13. I remember my mother teaching me how to perform wudu and namaaz, my father reading me verses from the Quran, all of us crowding in our kitchen an hour before sunset, surrounded by bottles of Rooh Afza, and dates, flour, samosas, piyajus, plates full of food, our bodies a little weary and our hearts full of prayer. At sunset, the melodious tone of the imam reciting the adhaan would cue us to break our fasts, my father piling my mom’s and my plates first before taking a bite. 

Every Ramadan, my body knows to follow a similar choreography. Even though iftaars surrounded by family are now a faraway dream, the body understands the rules. No food. No water. Guard your tongue. Lower your gaze. Have sabr. Even at its hardest, the fast carries an assurance: The call to prayer will come. A date will soften my mouth. Water will return to my throat. Millions of people around the world will follow the same synchronous routine for a month. 

Grief did not come with such rules. Grief did not come with a call. 

There is no call to prayer — adhan in Arabic — announcing relief. No appointed hour when absence lifts and my father will walk back through the door, resting his body on his walking stick, holding a plate of cut fruits for me. Instead, there is the long discipline of living without him for the rest of my life. I learn the contours of his loss the way I learnt the rhythm of fasting, first with shock, then with familiarity. 

The Quran tells us, “Oh, you who believe, fasting is prescribed for you as it was prescribed for those before you, so that you may become mindful of God.” Hunger is not the goal, consciousness is.

Fasting during Ramadan sharpens our awareness of the body, of time, of dependence on people and things.

Grief, then, is a form of fasting, too. 

It makes you aware of how much of our daily life is built around someone else’s presence. I noticed it in small, humbling ways. Like waking up and checking for the familiar morning missed calls, or almost texting him photos of every beach I am at, or saying, “Baba would love this!” every time I am at a new restaurant, or when … oh, well. 

His absence was not dramatic. It was domestic. Grief sat across from me at the empty dining table.

The Quran also promises that we will be tested “with something of fear and hunger and loss of wealth and lives.” The pairing feels deliberate. Hunger and loss. The body and heart emptied, creating space where something or someone once lived so dearly.

But Islam does not ask us to deny that emptiness. When the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) buried his infant son, Ibrahim, he wept. When someone questioned his tears, he replied, “This is mercy,” then he wept some more and said, “Verily, the eyes shed tears, and the heart is grieved, yet we will not say anything but what is pleasing to our Lord.” 

Grief, then, is not a crack in faith. It is an expression of love disciplined by trust.

Ramadan teaches us self-restraint. You are hungry, but you do not become cruel. You are tired, but you guard your speech. It teaches the body control without denial.

Grief has required something similar of me. There are days when I want to protest its finality. To ask why a life that was so intertwined with mine could vanish so abruptly. I remember how my eyes longed to see my father after the news of his death, as I lay thousands of miles away from home watching his burial over the phone. I remember how I had an awful ache in my chest for days that followed, and I thought perhaps I was having a heart attack, only to realize that it was grief that felt so heavy that my bones couldn’t carry it alone. 

But the discipline of grief, like the discipline of fasting, is not about erasing longing. It is about carrying it without letting it poison you.

The Prophet Ya’qub grieved so deeply for his son Yusuf that “his eyes turned white from sorrow,” the Quran tells us. He did not conceal his pain, but said, “I complain of my anguish and sorrow only to Allah…” His sorrow did not negate his faith; it coexisted with it.

I began to understand that sabr, so often translated as patience, is not about suppressing my tears in silence. It asks us for steadfastness. It is staying turned toward Allah even when the heart aches with grief. It is continuing to pray even when my feet feel heavy on the prayer rug.

During suhoor, the pre-dawn meal before the fast begins for the day, when the house is quiet and the sky is still undecided between night and day, I feel grief most clearly. It sits next to me gently as I sip my water and chew my dates. I do not eat because I am hungry, but because I am preparing for hunger. Grief feels like that, too. I wake each day knowing I will miss him tremendously; this anticipatory grief has become its own ritual.

And yet, Ramadan shows mercy. At sunset, the fast ends. That emptiness we felt all day is now relieved. The sweetness of a single date feels like a blessing, and the first sip of water is a balm to the soul. 

Grief, however, does not end at sunset. There is no reprieve; it feels like an endless fast. 

But Islam insists it is not endless.

The Quran speaks repeatedly of reunion: “Gardens of perpetual residence; they will enter them with whoever was righteous among their fathers, their spouses, and their descendants.” Every time I read this verse, it feels like a promise. Death, then, is separation, not disappearance.

Fasting is a purposeful restraint. In fasting, you abstain because you believe in what waits beyond the abstention. In grief, I endure because I believe in what waits beyond this life, the hope that one day I will see my father again. I believe my father’s presence did not end in a room separated by thousands of miles between us. I believe the love we shared did not simply disappear with his last breath.

Islam teaches that when a person dies, their deeds end except for three: ongoing charity, beneficial knowledge and a righteous child who prays for them. I hold tightly to that teaching. It means my relationship with him is not severed, it has transformed. My grief is an extension of all the love that I carry for him. 

So, I pray. I give charity in his name. I try to embody the kindness and gentleness he raised me with, to love deeply without expectations, to relish the joy of hosting and cooking for your friends and to not lose touch with my inner child, embracing whimsy and laughing from my heart. One of his greatest teachings was, “You’ve food, you’ve friends, you’ve family, what more could one need in life?”  

Yet grief has stripped away my illusions of permanence, even of these comforts. Nothing and no one really belongs to me. It has made me quicker to forgive. It has made me say “I love you” without embarrassment. It has forced me to confront the truth the Quran repeats with unflinching certainty: “Every soul shall taste death.”

Ramadan reminds us that life itself is a measured abstention. We are travelers passing through. We fast from permanence. We fast from certainty. We fast from the fullness of what we were created for.

On this fifth anniversary of my father’s death, I still feel the familiar hunger. I still reach for him in ways that surprise me. I say, “Baba would really like this pasta!” as we sit down for dinner. I light up when I see a clip of “America’s Funniest Home Videos,” because we spent years watching them ritually after iftar, I still buy his favorite attars — fragrant perfumes. I still check his messages in case there’s miraculously a new one waiting for me. But I no longer mistake the absence for abandonment.

Like every fast observed for the sake of Allah, I trust it is seen. I trust the hunger counts. I trust that somewhere beyond the horizon of this life, there will be a call more certain than any adhan, a call to return, to gather, to break this long fast in the presence of the One who gave him to me, and then took him back.

Some fasts end at sunset, but my grief began with his death, and I will observe this fast until the end of time, until we meet again.

(Silma Suba is the public relations and strategic storytelling officer at the Fetzer Institute. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.)