In death, you will be separated from the ugliness of the world, but if you lived a dishonest life, you will be separated from all the beauty of the world.

In our community in Pakistan, there is a strong belief that your actions follow you to the afterlife. We view death as a transition, a change from one state to another, not an end.

Grief is an inevitable fact of life that each person must face. There are times when we face loss and are tested as a community on a large scale. As a national community, we have had to face one horrific event after another; from the ongoing conflict and violence against Kashmiris to the brutal killing of 132 school children in a school in Peshawar. The feeling of loss is not one that is strange to our community.

However, it is also this grief that has allowed us to form the strongest of bonds between one another and to come together as a community to mourn the deceased. The rituals that follow death have been centered around socializing and building a sense of community to ease the suffering of the ones in mourning. At funerals, family members, friends, neighbors, and acquaintances all gather to pray for the soul of the departed. They eat together, pray together, and enjoy one another’s company.

In fragile times such as this, one can feel overwhelmed, oscillating between emotional extremes, wondering how they may adjust to this new and uncertain reality. In our culture, it is okay to feel saddened by loss and to feel burdened by the swift changes taking place, but it is equally necessary to have patience and accept that death is inevitable and, frankly, beyond our control. Strong emphasis is laid on internalizing this concept and reminding ourselves that this is the nature of life, and as people we are travelers passing through time.

Our community mourns death not just by expressing pain and grief but with strength and acceptance of the nature of life and the remembrance that death is not the end but rather the beginning of something greater.