My Grandmother
This is a rather personal story, but I wanted to share it so that others will make dua for my grandmother and so that it may be an inspiration for others…
One day, my father came into the house solemnly and went very quietly to my mother. A few minutes later, my mother was crying with my father was trying to comfort her. I found out that my maternal grandmother passed away.
My grandmother…had passed away.
As I thought of her life, I reflected on how much it had changed all those around her. Before I was born, my grandmother was once sleeping and suddenly woke up. She saw the time and thought she missed Asr. She was so suddenly shocked that she suffered her first stroke only because she thought she missed a prayer. A few years later, she fell very severely, became paralyzed from the neck down and was unable to utter any words.
Except for two words… Alhamdulillah and Al-Amin.
People would always tell me about miracles, but this was a personal one. She couldn’t say anything but these two words and they were only praising Allah and His Prophet. The amazing thing is that this wasn’t for only a year or two, but for twelve years. Imagine if you had nothing but good coming out of your mouth for more than 4,380 days…
When I was younger and would visit her in Bangladesh, I always felt a special affinity to her and while others would be in the living room or shopping, I would sit beside her bed and play on my own with her beside me. She couldn’t move, nor talk (except when she needed something and would then say the two phrases), but I felt a special peace when I sat beside her bed.
Once, I went to a relative’s house and as they had no television or computers, they humored us in the old way – they gave us clay and taught us how to make special objects. To this day, I still remember how to make a clay rose and I remember when I successfully made my first one. I triumphantly presented it to my grandmother and she put on the widest smile on her face. And it is this wide smile that is etched in my mind and heart after all these years…
It was times like these when she would broadly smile that I would feel very happy. When our vacation in Bangladesh was over, everybody was weeping (which in itself is amazing because of the amount of love they had for us even though we’ve been with them for such a short time), but nobody’s sadness was greater than my grandmother – she cried all day and night and I felt tremendous guilt washing over me for leaving her in such a state. We went to the airport, very sad and crushed, but were told by the officials that our flight was canceled until the next day. We rushed home, ecstatic, and the first thing I did when we reached home was to dash to my grandmother’s side. She was still crying but when she looked up and saw me, she smiled a smile that I have never seen before; it was the most genuine and heartfelt smile I had ever seen…
For her last 12 years, she never said anything other than Alhamdulillah and Al-Amin, except once. It may seem like a fiction romance story, but I assure you, it’s real and was witnessed by others. When my father came to propose for my mother, all the men were in the living room while my mother was with my grandmother. She was feeling very sad because my grandmother was ailing and didn’t want to leave her in such a state. To her surprise, my grandmother uttered her only words (other than the usual ones) in more than a decade: “Marry him for he is a good man and will be perfect for you.” My mother screamed in shock, and others ran to the room to see what happened. When begged to say more, my grandmother simply said, “Alhamdulillah.”
And it was in such a state that I, her grandson, as well as many others ever saw her. Even though she lost her power of movement and speech, she would never complain and would only spend her days and nights praising Allah and His Messenger. May Allah (subhanahu wa ta’ala) forgive all her past sins, shower her with Mercy, and give her Jannatul Firdaus. Ameen…
Helplessness
Reading today’s Washington Post, I came across a first page article that really struck me; it was basically about an Amtrak engineer who had watched a dozen suicides happen in front of his eyes over the course of 20 years. People would be sitting in the middle of train tracks just waiting to be hit, and the train engineers would not be able to deter the person with their frantic horn blasts and their attempts to brake the 75-mph train. As the article mentions:
“When I looked in the mirror, he was tumbling in the air, just flying,” Evans said. “I can see it as clearly as if it was happening in front of me right now.”
Colorfast mental snapshots of horror, a sense of overwhelming helplessness, sympathy and sometimes anger — these are the aftershocks that engineers and subway train operators report from their special perch as unwilling agents of sudden death.”
Imagine yourself, witnessing a murder happening in front of your eyes, and there is nothing that you can do. Now imagine all those around you that are following the wrong path and are destined for Hell if they don’t change – are you in that same sense of hopelessness?
“Metro’s wide windshields are designed to maximize the engineer’s view. Unfortunately, that means train operators see tragedy unfold with widescreen clarity, a high-def horror they never forget.”
What better maximization do we have other than our eyes in which we get a full view of everything happening in front of us? We have become so used to seeing murder scenes, hearing reports of the amount of dead people in a war or earthquake, reading tallying scores of dead people on Facebook and Twitter, but yet, our feelings of sadness have ebbed away. Why do we no longer feel the ‘high-def’ horror of seeing someone practicing another religion other than Islam and paving their way towards Hell? Have we become so desensitized?
“…the flip side of not being responsible is the devastating feeling of not be able to do anything in the moments before impact. The driver of a car might at least have the option of swerving out of the way or slamming on the brakes. The driver of a train doesn’t steer, and it can take a half-mile or more to stop. Evans has conditioned himself not to hit the emergency brake, a futile gesture more likely to injure passengers or derail the train than protect the person out front.”
Have we had previous experiences that no matter how much we tried, our attempts were futile? Because of this, we just stopped hitting ‘the emergency brake’ and stopped calling people to Islam? This really shouldn’t be the case because we never know when someone will become Muslim and come back to the Straight Path.
“The operator’s sense of helplessness can be worse when the person on the tracks doesn’t actually want to die.”
Sometimes we see people that really don’t believe in their religion and are looking for a way out. However, a circumstance wouldn’t allow them, maybe because of family or perhaps because of cainotophobia (fear of change)? Prophet Muhammad (salAllahu alayhi wa sallam) experienced this when Abu Talib refused to accept Islam because of his forefathers, so it definitely did happen. However, like the Prophet, we got to do as much as we can in hard times like those.
We’re not as hopeless as these train engineers that can’t do anything when a murder’s about to happen. Alhamdulillah, Allah (subhanahu wa ta’ala) gave us much more freedom to do something. We have a full view of the way people are living their lives and may sometimes feel a sense of hopelessness. But get over it. The Prophet did, and ended up making the whole of Arabia Muslim and the 1.5 billion Muslims now. Go help a Da’wah initiative. Be a true ambassador of Islam. You have potential to make somebody Muslim, so live up to that potential.
May Allah (subhanahu wa ta’ala) guide us, guide all those around us, and bring us together in Jannatul Firdaus. Ameen…
