By Nasir Imam
And my mother died. Though tragedies should immunize one to pain, I am trying to avoid the deliberate manufacture of misery. I find it hard to write this. I envy those who still have their parents, and despise those who abhor and /or abuse theirs. Some don?t even know their parents, them I pity. Now I know what love really is. Everyone loves his mum; I guess I just loved mine more.
My mother had been bedridden for weeks, she had been ill for years and we actually had given thought to losing her, but she got better only to relapse four years later. She lost weight considerably, barely eating and choosy when she does. Her accusation ?Are you abandoning me to die like this?? still echoes in my ears. Seeing her slip into a coma I rushed to pawn the tires of my grounded car for some money only to rush back home and find that my sweet mother has passed on. May her gentle soul rest in perfect peace, ameen.
Why is it that the inevitable often masquerade as the unexpected? We often fool ourselves with pride in bargaining with life only to realize that life is a just employer and it willingly pays you any wage you ask of it. I was talking to her just the day before, jokingly telling her that she looked like a young woman again. Upon learning of my financial disadvantage she even offered some money to me. A woman who was never selfish, her concern was to soften the poor state of others even on her death bed. Her existence was consumed by loving her family.
She was an orphan; she only had her elder brother and her children, but whoever came in contact with her was shown true love and compassion. We loved each other openly and passionately and everyone knew I was her favorite child and she told me so herself saying I?m the only child who showed he really cared about her. Of course her every wish was my command. She was an adviser and counselor. She was able to read my emotions and moods, even in the dark.
I was never satisfied with what I did for her, it was nothing compared with what she did for me. My moral attitude was always in her spotlight and she once accused me of changing from saying yes to her to bringing forth excuses for no. I couldn?t tell her what she knew, that time and situations have changed. Her funeral had the grace she never would have expected, it reminded me of her husband, my late father,.
I still think I am in the denial stage, I still can?t accept the fact that I am an orphan now, I have never truly considered what the word really meant and being a Muslim I can?t go ?why me??. As usual, I took everything for granted, never thinking my mum was old enough to die. In her last days her eyes developed cataract and I took her to an ophthalmologist, it was an intimate period for I remember her reclining her head on my lap in the waiting room at the hospital.
A hermit once said that time destroys the body, creates new hopes, brings death near and removes lights distant. But what is it in a human being that dies? Al-Ghazzali probably answered by asking ?what is the meaning of death but leaving of worldly riches??
My mother?s death has re-affirmed the seriousness of existence. Some say when one?s love is lost nothing remains but work so the vacuum that her absence creates renders the craze for wealth a less challenging affair.
It appeared that what the Creator gave me with His left hand He took with the left. He gave me a child but took my mother, since it was thirteen unlucky days before the birth of the former heralded the death of the latter. I look at my daughter and wish I am in her crib, obscured from the realities of life, the nuances of pettiness, from the mediocrity of the vain and from the pain of loss. I feel great fear for the tragedies that lie in her wake. Yet I am helpless because it is beyond my control.
Mothers are precious pearls; it is only in our youth that we think they?re a nuisance sometimes. But my youthful antagonism to some of my mother?s attitude with time metamorphosed into love and understanding. I soon discovered that satisfying her wishes always paves way for a sense of tranquility.
Growing up from my diaper days I never imagined life could be so cruel. My early sheltered life did prepare me for the task of adulthood, but talk about responsibility, decision, control, the works, these should have been subjects at elementary school.
I just can?t seem to reconcile the fact that my mother has passed away. She was not only my mother, but a sister, a friend and companion, actually my trusted confidante. I don?t know where to turn to now, the world no longer interest me. The lessons I?ve learnt from her are priceless, that of love and not hate, of counsel not isolation, of tolerance and not vengeance.
Watching my parents die has made me a man and a father as well. It makes me wonder how even tragedies conform to order. Watching my own wife transform from a girl into a mother I have greater respect for the marriage institution. Yet it?s puzzling, who do I love more? My mother that passed away or the child that replaced her?
They say life repeats itself in the alternations of influence and disfavor and that nothing takes place by chance, that providential purposes are absolute even though hidden, perfect in their symmetry and as fixed as the stars, and that happiness depends on ones dispositions, not their riches, therefore the ever present consciousness of approaching death should make us think of paying our debts to God and to man.
So the heart still remains one?s laborious companion, kudos to the Almighty, and the pain of loss still lay invisibly hidden in a corner in one?s heart, nibbling and never letting go, sometimes abating but continuous.
My mother?s death has created a void of unimaginable personal proportion no placating word or thought could smother. I look at the reality of death and I am cowed. As I fold my arms and await my remaining days, hoping to age well and live in conformity with the tenets of submission, patience and penitence, I toast all mothers, especially my own.
