Anyone paying heed?

Today, I received a phone call from a friend; his neighbor died last night and he asked me to join him for the funeral at Dohor time..

The deceased was only 18, my friend had a dinner with him and his family yesterday, the young brother went to bed, but he did not wake up.

He did not suffer from any illness, a young and strong brother just died during his sleep...24hrs ago, this young brother was eating and laughing and talking on his plans to start his first job in life, not knowing that he will not see the sun rise again, not knowing that it was his last dinner and that the clock was ticking the last seconds of his life...

We prayed on him after Dohor prayer, then took him to the graveyard which was about 300m away from the mosque. I stood close to the grave and looked inside,,,wallahi it seemed soo narrow, this is where we will all end, not in large palaces, not in large flats/houses/apartments, no luxurious hotel room, no!!...it would be just a hole, 50cm wide x 180cm long,,just enough to put your body laying on one side, facing Qiblah..

They lowered him inside his tomb, put him on his side facing Qiblah, opened the sheet on his face and started to cover the grave with a series of stone blocks (so that the body is protected in that space from the sand above it) then we filled the grave with soil. The following are a sequence of steps that take place for burial. Note that there are 2 types of graves for Mulsims: Shaqq (middle trench) and Lahad (side trench). In Oman/Algeria/Malaysia/Mekkah, they use Shaqq, in Madinah they use Lahad (which is the way the Prophet (S) got buried). The Shaqq and Lahad can have variants.

Digging Shaqq grave (middle trench)

Body lowered inside the grave, he/she rests on the right hand side, facing Qiblah

Trench is covered with block stones/ wood so that the space where the body is will be protected from soil above.

Interstices carefully plugged to avoid sand falling inside the trench

Grave is filled with Soil/Sand

After we buried the young brother, the Imam made us sit on the ground and he made a small reminder. In his reminder, he said that Allah created us for a sole purpose: to Worship Him...how many of us are so distracted by dunya that we forget where we will all go one day. We take heed for 5 minutes, then after that, we just forget and keep running here and there just like we will not die one day. He reminded the audience that the young brother was only 18, healthy and no disease, yet, he was in a grave. We are standing around the grave, not being questioned, yet the person in the grave is being questioned.

We kept silent after that and made duas for the young brother, then we presented the condolences to the family who stood in a small line, then we left the graveyard, leaving behind us the young brother facing his future all alone.

May Allah Awake us from our distraction, and Help us Work for such day and Cover us with His Blessings on the day He Would Take our souls. It is certainly a great blessing that we are still alive, and still be able to read one more line of Quran, or make one more tasbeeh, so many of us have now been deprived of this.

Today is work and no questioning, but tomorrow it will be questioning, and no more work. The brother is now spending his first night in this grave, may Allah Forgive him, and Forgive all of us when we will reach that time. Certainly, in this life, this dunya, we are taking care of our houses and make sure to have good A/C during summer and good heaters during winter, but our real homes, our real houses, our graves, how many of us are really taking care of these real houses to make them a garden of Paradise?...may Allah Have Mercy on all of us...