I’ve been asked recently, quite a few times, about my whereabouts and happenings.  What has happened to Ayesha Siddique over the past few weeks?

Not too much, I guess

Two Saturdays back, as was mentioned in the previous post, I had my ruksati wedding party with my one and only SaqibSaab.  Sunday we made a few rounds with different relatives, and Monday his parents left back to Illinois.  We didn’t leave Michigan until Tuesday.

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It sure feels like it.  Today it was a 81 degrees and uncomfortably humid.  Bees and wasps alike were buzzing outside and around our deck.  And of course, abbu had fired up the grill for a family BBQ.

A puhpo of mine came into town this weekend from Jersey and she requested that abbu barbeque.  So he planned a menu filled with tikkah and kabobs.  But I was uninterested from the sound of all that.  I interjected yesterday and demanded there be hotdogs and hamburgers!  As much as we barbeque throughout the summer, burgers and hotdogs, in my opinion, don’t get enough grill time.  We usually have steak, chicken tikkah and kabobs on heavy rotation.

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As it was the first day of Spring break, the weather was delightful and lent itself to lots of fun.  I woke up and went to catch up with some high school friends, came home, went to an afternoon dawath, came home, took a wonderful nap and then had an amazing evening with family.

It was the later half of the day that was the real fun part; the evening.  The Raufs came over and it felt like the good old days.  The days when Iesa was a toddler calling computers tabunatchi, Ibrahim was brand new and maghrur haseen, and Saira appi and Najam bhai hadn’t moved away to Philadelphia, then to Germany then to Saudi Arabia.  It felt like one of those old Saturday nights when abbu’d fire up the grill, and we’d shoot the breeze on the deck.

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My sister-in-law showed me these two videos.  I found them to be extraordinarily cute, even though I’m not the biggest fan of ‘cute baby’ videos on YouTube.  Give ‘em a look.

Star Wars according to a 3-year old

Hey Jude, as sung by a chotu

Today my family and I hopped in the car and drove to the masjid for a seminar entitled The Final Journey.  The program included how to take care of the sick, what to do when approaching death, what to do at the time of death, how to perform ghusl on the deceased, how to wrap the body, how to pray salaatul Janazah, how to bury the deceased, and how to deal with grief.  It was really informative, and well organized.  The turn out was amazing, masha’Allah.  May Allah reward the organizers.

On the way back home, my family and I had an interesting discussion.  My sister and I were telling my mom and dad that the only part of the program we thought was unnecessary was the 20 minutes spent on being patient after death.  It was something worth mentioning, but I was convinced that people already *knew* all that, so what was the point on saying it over and over again?  Abu countered my statement with:

(51:55) And remind, for indeed, the reminder benefits the believers

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