Mourning Faried Jacobs and the Pain of Letting Go

Your passing caught me off guard.
I had planned to fly down to Groote Schuur Hospital—to hold your hand, to hear your familiar, half-teasing greeting:
“This is nothing. How long are you staying? Will you be sleeping on our couch in the lounge?”
But the doctors had already sedated you.
And while we weren’t watching, you let go of my hand and slipped quietly into the next realm.
I said my goodbye by placing my palm on your forehead, feeling your life force dissolve.

The grief swept me away like a sudden tide.
In that single, helpless moment, memories surged—those threads that bound us—flooding my chest in a merciless storm of emotion.
Now, five days later, I’m still adrift, trying to gather pieces from the wreckage.
Perhaps these fragments will steady me.

You shaped my life profoundly—especially during my adolescence.
With Dad growing older, it was you, along with your remarkable wife Zuleiga, who guided me through those uncertain years.
During summer vacations, I was your clumsy teenage apprentice—sweeping up at building sites where you were foreman and supervisor.
It was my job to scrub your and Dad’s boots clean, and to wash off the cement-caked tools of the trade.
You were, in those days, both stern and kind—frightening and benign.

One day, while we were building a factory, the owner’s son stormed onto the site, shouting insults at our father.
Mid-rant, he suddenly found himself face-down in a wheelbarrow.
You had knocked him out cold with a spade to the side of the head.
You saw him for what he was: a racist, self-righteous prick—and an abusive employer.
You never tolerated either.
That moment stayed with me.
Years later, when I joined the freedom struggle, I carried it like a compass.

Of course, I wasn’t guided by you alone.
I was blessed—loved by all our siblings, their partners, and their children.
But your influence stood apart. Like your name, it was unique.
You were, somehow, the rare blend of our mother’s blunt honesty and our father’s quiet grace.
Your language was rough, your heart soft.
It took us years to understand that your sharp tongue was often the symptom of undiagnosed, untreated diabetes—the same illness that eventually claimed you.

Now that you can no longer protest, I’ll say it plainly:
You were a terrible capitalist.
You once ran a butchery in Mitchell’s Plain that failed—not from mismanagement, but because you kept giving the meat away.
To struggling customers.
To broke relatives.
Later, in your construction business, you gave jobs to young family members who needed work, even when the books didn’t balance.
When the business eventually closed, you had no regrets.
The Qur’an speaks of such people, calling them “those who gave preference to others, even though poverty was their own lot.”

Postnote

Faried was the middle-child in our siblings—one of four brothers and three sisters.
He passed away eight years ago, on the eighth day of Ramadan.
He used to joke that he would be the one to bury Fuad, our eldest brother, since he was younger and expected to outlive him.
But fate had other plans.
We lost Fuad two years ago, and with him, another great pillar of our family.

In our grief, we found strength in remembering Faried’s resilience, his unflinching kindness, and his deep sense of duty.
His life remains for us a source of comfort, a touchstone of dignity, and a lesson in selfless love.

Footnote:

May Allah have mercy on his soul, inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi raji’un, and on the souls of all our departed—those who laughed with us at one table, and now dwell in the unseen.