“Sometimes I wonder if I would be standing alone on the Day of Judgment.”
My grandmother had written these words in her diary, on a page among many. A single sentence that managed to bleed through her pen, indicating the storm in her mind. I read it years later, but couldn’t ask her why she thought that. Why did she wonder that she would be alone there when my father and aunt have always stood beside her in this world? Would they not stand by her in the afterlife?
In our belief, humans are called up before God on the Day of Judgment by their mothers’ names. They would stand beside their mothers and await their trial. But would this be the case for adopted children, too? My grandmother didn’t think so, and thus, in anguish, these words created a tempest in her heart. She wondered that since my father and aunt were adopted, perhaps they would be called up by the names of their birth mothers, and she would remain alone in the afterlife, just like she was alone before she adopted them.
I wish I had read these words sooner, when she was still with us. I wish I could have told her that God would not judge based on blood alone. If He is the all-seeing, the all-knowing, then He knows the hours she put into raising her children. He knows the pain she endured to be their shelter. And He knows the countless times she sacrificed herself to make sure her little ones thrive.
He who measures His love for His creation in terms of the love of seventy mothers, why would He create the distinction of a mother by blood and a mother by soul?
Yes, she did not give birth to my father and aunt. But she devoted every waking moment of her life after adopting them in their care. She raised them, taught them, fed them, and made them capable of looking after themselves. Then do all these sacrifices, these benevolences, fall short before the single act of birthing the child?
The world judges. The people judge. “You didn’t give birth to them, so you are not their real mother.” But what exactly is a real mother?
These constraints are made by people like you and me and her. But why would the Creator of all creations judge like this when He knows everything from the beginning to the very end?
My dear grandmother is now at rest under a neem tree in her earthen shroud. But in my heart, I know she won’t be alone on the Day of Judgment. My father and my aunt will be called up by her name. Because any woman can give birth, but only the one who loves and endures for her children has the right to be called a mother.
A seed can be planted by anyone, but only careful tending makes the plant grow, become a tree, and then bear fruit.
Imaan Farooq Sheikh is a writer and poet with an insatiable love for books, art, and nature. She was born in Karachi, Pakistan, and earned her B.Arch from NEDUET. She actively seeks writing opportunities, and her poems were published in the anthology Coalesce of Eunoia (2025) by TWS Publications.