Eid al-Fitr offers solace for those in grief, the endless fast
(RNS) — Ramadan ended yesterday (March 19) with the celebration of Eid al-Fitr. By the final days of the holy month of fasting and prayer, hunger feels less like a hardship and more like a teacher. It teaches me to be grateful for every morsel of food and every moment of life, and to gain clarity about who I am when I am not trying to be somebody for everybody else. But a strange tenderness comes over me as Ramadan ends. A month after my father died in March 2021, Ramadan arrived with its familiar discipline: waking before dawn, head bent in prayer, hunger stretching the hours until sunset. I broke my first fast the way his absence broke my heart; quietly, unceremoniously, sitting in silence at the dining table in my small shared apartment in a wintry Chicago neighborhood. I have been fasting for Ramadan since I was 13. I remember my mother teaching me how to perform wudu and namaaz, my father reading me verses from the Quran, all of us crowding in our …
