His father died on a Tuesday.
Tariq got the call at 6am — he suffered from a sudden heart attack with no warning. By 8am he was in his father's house, standing in the hallway with his two sisters, none of them knowing what to do first.
The Janazah was arranged (the mosque helped with that). But everything else fell to them.
Where was the will?
Was there even a will?
What bank did his father use?
There were three different bank cards in his wallet and nobody knew which accounts were active. One of the sisters remembered a pension from his old employer — but the name of the company, the policy number, the contact details?
Nobody knew.
They spent the first four days of their grief not grieving. They spent it searching.
“We were going through drawers at 2am looking for a document that might not even exist.”
Tariq's father was a good man. He was a careful man too. He prayed his five prayers, paid his zakat and he was more than generous with his time and his money.
But he had never written anything down. He had never told anyone where anything was. And that wasn't because he didn't care — but because, like most of us, he believed there would be more time.
There wasn't.
What they found — and what they didn't
After two weeks, they had pieced together most of the picture.
One bank account discovered through a statement in a kitchen drawer. A pension found only because his former employer happened to send a letter. An insurance policy nobody knew existed — it took a solicitor to find it three months later, and by then probate had already started without it.
His Janazah wishes?
They made their best guess. He had mentioned once, years ago, that he wanted to be buried near his own father. They found a plot at the right cemetery. Whether it was exactly what he wanted, they will never know.
His personal messages?
There were none. No letter to his children nor words for his grandchildren. Nothing written down that said: this is what I want you to know.
That, Tariq told me, was the hardest thing. Not the paperwork, but the silence.
The thing nobody talks about
We prepare for everything in this life. We insure our cars, write shopping lists and plan our holidays six months in advance.
But the one event that is absolutely guaranteed — the one transition that will touch every single person we love — most of us leave entirely unplanned.
In Islam, we are reminded of death not as a weapon of fear but to refocus our attention. The Prophet ﷺ said: "Remember often the destroyer of pleasures" — meaning death. As a reminder of what matters.
Preparing is not pessimism. It's the last great act of love you can offer the people you will one day leave behind.
What you can do today
You do not need to have everything figured out. You do not need a solicitor's appointment or a financial adviser or hours of spare time.
You need to start by writing it down.
Where is your will?
What are your Janazah wishes?
Which bank accounts do you hold?
Who should look after your children if something happens to you?
What do you want your children to know — in your own words, written by your own hand?
These are not morbid questions. They are the most loving questions you will ever answer.
If this story resonated with you —
The Legacy Companion was built for exactly this moment. A complete Islamic end of life planner — so your family never has to search during grief.
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