Grief is an Heirloom That I Treasure Dearly

The moment I read the text, I knew it was my son.

I rushed from my house to the car and began the three-hour drive to New Jersey where a man’s dead body had been pulled from a waterway familiar to my family. Days had passed without my son, Muriyd, calling me or answering my calls so already I knew something was wrong. But death was not an expectation.

As I sped down I-78, the medical examiner investigator confirmed over the phone words I had feared hearing since I learned I was pregnant three decades before. The fluvial corpse indeed belonged to my beloved child.

Not fully understanding if I was awake or asleep, alive or dead, I unraveled at lightning speed. Between sobs and horrendous screams that escaped from somewhere I did not know existed, I alternated, thanking Allah for having given me such a beautiful son and begging for Mercy on his soul.

I made calls to select family and friends who were also dumbfounded by the sudden news, and a few promised they would be at my destination awaiting me. Since Muriyd was so popular and had been found on sovereign tribal land, I assumed some tribesmates would also be congregated. I remember wondering how I would handle seeing everyone. Being on that land without my son, and knowing he would never be there again, was unthinkable.

What would I say to the people?

Would I even be able to speak?

Up until that day I made it a point to always keep control of myself publicly. I behave conservatively for the most part, so when I would see grief-stricken mothers in news reels screeching uncontrollably, fainting, being carried or pulled away from crime scenes as their children — usually sons — lie dead on the street, casualties of car crashes, domestic abuse, gang drive-bys, or police slaughters, I took mental memos. Never lose myself as they, if ever a terrible incident such as one of those found my family.

I decided that when I arrived on the land I would greet everyone with my usual smile and niceties then figure it out from there. I turned into the entrance and parked. A small group of solemn, nervous faces was in the parking area. I stepped from my car acknowledging everyone as planned then without warning, something I did not see or feel shoved me hard into the side of my vehicle. A friend quickly grabbed me and hugged me to himself, and I was in a whirl, unsure of what vortex I had been knocked into.

We all walked the land near the shoreline, talking, questioning, and hypothesizing about what possibly could have caused a skilled canoeist to turn up dead in water he was so familiar with. It seemed that he had drowned, but from the onset that made no sense to anyone, given he had spent years canoeing in that very water — a generous yet shallow and calm overflow from the attached Ramapo River — without incident.

I examined the shoreline where his unprotected canoe sat, and once again that silent intruder attacked me. My knees collapsed hard onto the green grass. Audibly, I demanded my body behave. “Stand up!” I hissed under my breath, but it did not heed. It took two of my male relatives to lift me from the ground.

Little did I know, that would not be the last time I would lose complete control of my faculties. For months to come, the enormity of losing my son, in the way that I had lost him (betrayal and murder by so-called friends), and the coverup and attempted silencing by law enforcement and other institutions caused me to suffer with anxiety and horrific panic attacks. For a while, I believed the sorrow would surely stop my broken heart as it had done my father a little more than a week after my son’s funeral.

My youngest daughter took to my bed for a full year, staying near to comfort me in the night. During the day I was actively pursuing justice — obtaining documents, archiving, writing, driving back and forth to institutions in New Jersey from Pennsylvania — and running solo the organization I started in Muriyd’s honor while also caring for my family and working as a nurse. But in the evening when there was nothing to distract me or vie for my attention, I wept. Every night I sobbed myself to sleep then awakened in the same manner. I found no solace even in my dreams as I called out my son’s name into the darkness, and involuntarily sought escape through voiced prayers. Yet there was no relief.

The more evidence I found to prove Muriyd’s death was orchestrated, the more justice was denied to me by law enforcement, medical boards, journalists, and self-proclaimed allies and Indigenous rights advocates. With each piece of the puzzle, my rage increased, balancing the pain and elevating my moral clarity.

Those early days were particularly excruciating. Nasty rumors were circulating about my son by foes who swore they loved him, and lies were being told on me by people claiming to be by my side. My spiritual conviction was regularly questioned by Muslims and other vilomas who believed my tawwakul was doing too much. I was constantly dismissed by opinionated, uninformed naysayers as a “grieving mother” when I exposed verifiable facts. And my racial integrity was scrutinized by people who seemed to only want justice for Indigenous and Blacks when the culprits were white.

There were innumerable times when I was uncertain whether I could muster the patience and decorum necessary for navigating this mission that was placed upon me. I wanted retribution — in this world first — and knew I would get it, but that it would be through fighting many systems virtually alone. I reached out for the strength of women who I knew had suffered my plight long before me:

Enslaved African American and Indigenous mothers who witnessed their young children’s slow deaths due to disease, malnutrition, and other societal disparities;

My great-grandmother who had to contend with erasure when her son drowned in the Passaic River, and the local news made no mention of it when they praised the river’s majesty three days later;

My mother who lost two separate newborns due to not having the money and resources to obtain better healthcare;

Mamie Till-Mobley who fought an aggressively racist system and won by sparking in her son’s honor, a movement that has benefited billions and will continue to do so;

Sybrina Fulton who fought that same system decades later, demanding accountability for her own son’s murder, and refusing erasure of his existence;

And the many mothers whose screaming, fainting, and needing to be carried away nearly lifeless from devastating scenes that I now understand intimately.

What had these women endured, in their hearts and minds as well as from the people around them?

How had they sustained with even more obstacles in their paths, if they had paths at all?

What sorrow and fury had plagued the enslaved?

Nestled in my mothers’ calm?

How many had nudged Mamie and Sybrina towards silence and cowardice, urging them to sit quietly in corners suckling their heartache in lieu of standing unmoved in America’s face, demanding their own retribution?

And how many — including myself at one time — had scorned numbers of unnamed mothers for boldly and unapologetically loving and grieving their fallen children who were violently snatched from their arms, very often without fair consequence.

I have learned to harness the energy of love, calm, sorrow, rage, refusal of silence, boldness, and activism from these mothers and others globally to generate power and force that sustains me. I consciously stand upon their shoulders holding a shield and wielding a sword that has an acquired taste for injustice.

Because of the past I learned to strategize in the present for the future.

I am powerful in ways I have never been before, and I know what is possible. That makes many, many people — friend and foe — very uncomfortable.

M.