[2025 Reflection 1 (of 8?)]: how are we friends, how can you love me if you cannot write my obituary? (or, how death studies are teaching me about curiosity as a register of love)

Bismillah. We begin everything with the name of Allah. We recite Bismillah to initiate an act, acknowledging the intention and ethics that follow.

☺️ Hello!

To get me back into the habit of newslettering, for the next eight (or nine?) days of 2025, daily, I will share a 2025 reflection.

First up: how are we friends, how can you love me if you cannot write my obituary? (or, how death studies are teaching me about curiosity as a register of love)

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For the past year, I have been training as a death doula. In addition to the asynchronous coursework and synchronous meetups, I have been running a death studies group, where we gather on Zoom to discuss our “programming” around death. I have a long way to go: I want to get a certificate in thanatology, receive training in Islamic burial and washing, work closely with a nursing home, and visit all the gravesites of my (known) ancestors.

Death is so much about living. Alua Arthur is the founder of Going With Grace, the program facilitating my death doula training. One of Arthur’s guiding questions is: “What must I do to be at peace with myself so that I may live presently and die gracefully?” This question scares me because I have spent most of my life focused on keeping everyone else’s peace intact, so I have not nurtured my own. More than anything, this question terrifies me because a graceful death is predicated on being present, and being present requires me to reflect on the relationships I have built in this dunya, so that I am present within a loving embrace. I must also consider the foundation upon which I build new relationships.

Endings have buoyed me over the last few years, not because I enjoy conflict, but because they have all been healthy and necessary choices. The sunsetting of these relationships was not about an individual situation that blurred my horizon line; instead, it was about recognizing and honoring the misalignment between what I needed and deserved from community, and what I was told I needed and deserved. Each sunset, ending, or pivot is information. This is not meant to diminish these relationships or reduce them to the status of intellectual study or instrumentalized experience; despite endings, I still honor that, at a moment in time, something occurred, and that people are, well, people — and sometimes we can no longer be the type of people who share the same physical or psychic spaces. When I say “information,” I mean that thinking only about that relationship in a single plot line put me on the defensive; I was great at articulating what I do not need or deserve, but was fully immobilized by the task of naming what community and care could be.

A not-so-novel idea said by many before: curiosity is a register of love. It is affective and embodied.

Last year, I wrote about this here, but maybe I will expand for tomorrow’s newsletter:

[27 May 2024]: "Using the Word as Bait" — blind bisexual goose; green porno; slippery texts; sloshy belly of texts; eggs; love as curiosity + quantum mechanics; heresy + agitation; erotic consumption

Over the last 16 months, I have crafted a list of questions that help me process: Am I in a mutually loving relationship with this person? Is this a friend?

1. If this person reaches Jannah, will they ask Allah about me?

2. Can this person write my obituary?

3. Do I want this person to attend my funeral?

4. Is this a person I want to sit with me at my bedside as I die?

5. Does this person want me to have the joy, success, and happiness they have experienced?

6. Is this person happy for me when something exciting happens?

7. Are there things I still want to learn about this person?

Thank you for reading. All the best, always,

Kameelah 👽

Finally, while I do not organize my finances around paid newsletter subscriptions, wouldn’t it be cool if this little newsletter could allow me to take quarterly self-imposed writing retreats? Consider getting a one-year membership at USD 70 :)

How to cite this newsletter: Rasheed, K. (Year, Month Day). Newsletter Title. I Will (?) Figure This All Out Later. URL