WAY member Ruba shares her reflections and resolutions this Ramadan, four years after her husband’s death…

February 2025

Ramadan Mubarak to all of those in the Muslim community and to our Muslim members. We know how difficult it can be to mark this Holy Month without your loved one. After sharing her story over the last couple of years, South London-based WAY member Ruba, 33, shares how Ramadan helps her reflect on her loss and how she is marking what will be her fifth Holy Month without her beloved husband, Aqeel.  

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The Holy Month of Ramadan is one of the most significant times of the year for Muslims and begins on a different date each year in line with the lunar system on which the Muslim calendar is based. This year, the month begins at the end of February/early March, coinciding with what is often seen as the end of the winter months and beginning of the spring season. 

I lost my wonderful husband, Aqeel, in late 2020 when he was just 33 years old. I was 29 and our daughter, Zainab, was only 20 months old. Like others in our position, our experience was deeply devastating and continues to bring difficult challenges each day. Ramadan has always been a particularly difficult time of year, being a family-oriented month where our loss comes to the fore and is often felt even more deeply than usual. 

Ramadan reflections 

Whilst Ramadan is the ninth and not the first month of the Islamic year, the month is nevertheless a time of reflection. Many Muslims use the month as an opportunity to reflect on their spirituality and think about what they might wish to do to build upon this in the months and years to come. It is often a time for Muslims to reassess where they stand with their faith, and many use the month to develop new habits that they can continue year-round. 

I personally try to institute the tradition of a “Ramadan resolution”. This is something I did together with Aqeel and that I try my best to continue with Zainab. The idea is that you develop an additional “good” habit during the month with a view to continuing it later. This might be developing on a personal trait, such as patience, or engaging in additional prayers beyond the usual obligatory daily prayers for Muslims.

Doing this also helps me keep Aqeel close to us during the month by continuing a tradition we had together, as well as engaging in other activities to incorporate him into the month (for instance, by eating his favourite foods, sponsoring Iftar (fast breaking) meals in his memory and making charitable donations in his honour).

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Ramadan resolutions – for 2025 and beyond 

Although Ramadan is always difficult without Aqeel, this year I want to use the space it offers and the start of spring timing to develop not only spiritual resolutions, but also a reflective outlook on the life I am building after loss. 

Over the last four years, I have learnt that there is so much life can give us in spite of the pain we carry. My Islamic faith and practice also teaches this beautifully – patience, or sabr in Arabic, is a trait that Muslims are taught to develop and nurture in the face of life’s challenges. Ultimately, as Muslims we would ideally each reach a place of acceptance in the life that has been decreed for us by God. But getting to that stage of acceptance is a journey that is not linear – a journey that takes time and a process of developing a trust in God and in ourselves. 

The Quran (Islamic Holy Book) also states that “with every hardship comes ease” (Quran 94:5), a statement that is then repeated in the subsequent verse (Quran 94:6). What this teaches us is that life is full of challenges, but that each of these can, in its own way and in a way that is often difficult to foresee, bring us some form of peace. It is a reminder that hardship and pain run parallel to joy and peace in all of our lives and that even in the most difficult of times, there are highs amidst the lows. Nothing is easy or straightforward on its own, nor is it meant to be – but that doesn’t mean there isn’t beauty around us too, even in the most painful of times. Accepting the hardship and the ease is part and parcel of our journey through life and, for me, part of the natural ebbs and flows in the practice of my Muslim faith.

My life after loss is so quiet and painful without Aqeel in so many ways (the hardship) – but I have also grown in ways I could never have imagined (the ease). This Ramadan, I am reflecting on how far my daughter and I have come and how we might choose to go on living in our after-loss state, something that I believe with always change with time. At one stage in our journey, the growth was me leaving my long-standing job and going back to university, at another it was us moving home. 

Whatever it may be, living after loss is still living and it doesn’t mean letting go – either of Aqeel, who is with me always, in his university pin I wore at my graduation ceremony (from a rival university!) or in his personal items I strategically placed when staging photos for the sale of our home. It also means I won’t let go of times of year like Ramadan, which, whilst unbearably difficult at times, will always offer the safe space for grounding, reflection and hope for the years ahead.