Michael Wesley II RIP
303
It has been brought to my attention by his sister that our FSO brother Michael Wesley II passed away yesterday due to a car accident. On behalf of the FSO, I wish to extend my heartfelt condolences to his family.
Despite appearances to the contrary, human life can be incredibly delicate and fragile. I lost the first love of my life to a freak car accident during the early 1990s that devastated me and, which had it not been for the crucible of my spiritual path, would have also certainly taken me out of this mortal coil in short order from pure grief alone. I watched my father in the early teens of this century get stricken by cancer after a turmoil of a couple of years fighting the effects of the Global Financial Crisis that wiped out every last penny he had ever worked for in over 30+ years. My mother and I were there during his final moments as the breath left him, burying him less than two weeks later before I jumped on a plane to rejoin a very pregnant Roya in Berlin weeks away from giving birth to Nuri. He missed the birth of his first two grandchildren - my Nuriel and my sister's boy - by about six weeks.
The All-High gave me some respite and solace for seven years until that tragic night in Berlin when Roya unexpectedly passed away while sleeping next to Nuri and without any forewarning. Had it not been for Nuri, and that I was breathing and alive for her sake alone, I would have also given up the ghost right then and there.
This year has been an interesting year where I have found out belatedly about the death of former foes and where several friends and acquaintances have also tragically left this mortal coil one after the other.
Michael Wesley II was technically my murid and I gave him virtual baya'a/hand in the name of the Fatimiya Sufi Order in 2021 since he couldn't physically make it all the way over here to take it. As a black man living in America trying to both survive and walk the straight and narrow, Michael had been struggling with inner demons for some time. We talked about it even up to two days ago on Telegram. Be that as it may, the dhikrs I had given him had worked to some extent. Only last week he told me that the woman he had his sights on had agreed to marry him. I was genuinely happy for him since a good woman for a good man is the difference between paradise and inferno in this insane material world!
News of Michael's death has affected me all day today. He was on his way on the interstate to see his family in Georgia when it happened. In any case, I truly hope the Mother was there to take his hand and escort him to jannah/paradise at the moment of his passing and that he got to experience what we once chatted about on Telegram about death being the road to awe!
Even though confronting ones mortality on a daily basis is part and parcel of this Path, and I even look forward in anticipation to the day when my own celestial wedding (urs) finally arrives, nevertheless the older I get the more the deaths of people I know and who I have interacted with in some fashion affect me on a deep level. Michael Wesley II's definitely has, and I can swear I actually saw him for a split second present here in my room just under 30 minutes ago from this writing, so I am pretty sure he is ok! But the loss of this young man hit me and it feels like losing a child!
