Amidst my storm, I entered another storm. Like two tornadoes colliding. The smaller one swallows the larger one whole. Because force has nothing to do with size. The real weight of a storm is only known to the person standing inside it.

I thought all this time that I was carrying a lot. That my load was so heavy it made me stuck. Could not move forward. Could not go backward. Just stuck. I wrote about it. I named it. I almost made it my identity.

Then today, all of that went away.

I stepped into the storm my mother has been carrying for the last five years. I knew about it. Saw it. Stood beside it. But standing beside weight is not the same as lifting it. The moment I did, even for ten minutes, my own storm vanished. I forgot about every single one of my issues. Ten minutes of her load erased all of mine.

Because what she carries is not her responsibility. These were never her responsibilities. She made us. Raised us. Shaped us. Built us. Helped us. In return for nothing. But there should have been a return.

She is almost eighty. She should be at the Avenues with her friends arguing about whose grandchild is the fattest, whose knee replacement was more dramatic, whose facial hair is growing faster than their husband’s, and which blood pressure medication makes you dizzy and which one just makes you angry. She should be in bed whenever she wants and awake whenever she wants. She should not have to think about who is coming this Thursday because her children should be there every day. On Saturdays she should have lunch at a different restaurant, ordering the same Quinoa salad and every dessert on the menu, with enough spoons to try a bite from each, then leaving the restaurant with photos shared to every WhatsApp group she is in. Even the one she was added to by mistake but never left. The one with my father’s bearded mulla friends who send hadiths, reminders of sa3at istijaba, and the group reminder to fast ayam al-beedh a day or two before, every single month.

And speaking of hadiths and ayat and reminders, I reminded myself.

Lower for them the wing of humility out of mercy. The scholars explain this image beautifully. Ibn Uthaymin says: even if you are soaring high like a bird, lower your wing for them. Come down. Not out of weakness. Not out of obligation. Out of mercy. The kind of mercy that comes from knowing that everything you are started with them. And the word الذل here is not the humiliation we fear. It is the humility we owe. It is the quiet softening of your pride in front of the person who built you before you were anything.

And the hadith:

Disgraced. Then disgraced. Then disgraced. The Prophet ﷺ said it three times. Who? The one who reaches his parents in their old age, one or both of them, and still does not enter Paradise. Ibn Uthaymin explains: this person was handed the widest door to Paradise, the door of serving his parents when they need him most, and chose not to walk through it. And Ibn al-Qayyim calls it the noblest gate of Paradise, the one you enter by simply being there for them. To lose that gate is to lose what cannot be replaced.

This is what I understood today. Not from a book. Not from a lecture. From ten minutes of carrying what she carries every day.

This world is فانية. It will pass. Every storm I am drowning in will pass. But the chance to be there for her will not come around again. And I should be ashamed if I am the one the hadith describes. The one who had them, right there, in their old age, and still did not make it count.

So yes. I finally got it. The call I was waiting for. It is late. But better late than never. And like everything else in my life, from injuries to bruises to wounds to every scar I earned and every scar I did not, the storm went away. Not because of time. Not because of patience. Not because of anything I did.

Because of her. The woman who built me. Still building.

This might be my last post for a while. I will not be playing the progress social experiment anymore. I might post once a week. Maybe once a month. Maybe less. But it does not matter. Because my progress for this week is 100%. I am finally here. I finally made it. I am not swimming in the deep anymore.

My mum threw me a lifeline.