al fatihah

there is one person in my life who is so so dear to me... she has left us, leaving behind a great impact and lots of lessons to be learnt and remembered...i have written about her many times...Please read this...and  Please read this... she is my maternal grandmother... my ummamma... 

if you had known her as a person, you would surely know her as a quiet person but when she is around the family, she fusses about each and every one of us... all her life was spent in india but occassionally she came and stayed with us for few months this went on many many years...she started staying with us longer than that i.e. for a few years and in 2005, she stayed with us for good... her life was such an exemplary that the whole panaikulam village talk only good things about her... she had only one biological child who stayed with her until a little after she got married who then came to live in malaysia with my dad... my grandmother never once stopped praying for my mother and her children... i have always heard of my grandmother having some nazar or prayers for us, her grandchildren.  her neighbours used to relate to us all about her.  her goodness and prayers were not only reserved for us but for everyone, even a stranger... i have heard that the rewards of the goodness you do will go to the generations after you.  i used to think that my forefathers must have done so much goodness for all the blessings we feel today...

she is the most selfless person i have known ever in my life... she is always thinking about everyone around her as well as everyone that matters to her regardless of where they are... this is also one person who's tawakkal to Allah beats everything else.... she has so much love to give to everyone of us.  she was literally an angel for i see no flaws in her. 

i have so many happy memories with her... as well as my wrong doings towards her... i used to tease her a lot and laugh at her or argue with her in my growing up years... when i was little, she used to tell us so many stories about our forefathers and the village...she would also relate to us stories about our relatives whom i have known not in person...she would pass on all the grandmother stories and tips so much sophistication that i used to tell her that if she had been born in my generation, she would have been a scientist...

her life is an exemplary... one is her level of tawakkal... two, her life revolved around the 5 time prayers since she was young until she got bed ridden, a year before she passed away... in her old age that i have known, she would wake up for her morning prayers, sleep a little afterwards, does her morning tahara, has her morning  tea, breakfast an hour later, help out my mum with anything she could, rest a bit before her afternoon prayers, has lunch after zohor prayers, wait for her great grandchildren back from school (she would religiously wait to open the gate for them), sleeps a bit before her late afternoon prayers, has evening tea after asar prayers, finds herself something to do until it is time for magrib prayers, has her dinner after both magrib and isyak prayers at about 9 pm everyday and her bedtime will be slightly after 10 pm... in between this ritual are her zikir time while adding all the additional prayers, middle of the night prayers, chatting with us and eating of betel leaves ( i love the smell when she eats her betel)... i would tease her and she would smile sheepishly... never once she stop asking anyone if they have eaten... after i have gotten married, she would shoosh me to serve my husband...

it is amazing to note that the first sign of her TIME has arrived is about more than a year before she left us, it was her prayer time that went all wrong.... she would always pray before the time...we used to tell her but her reaction would be...is it? so we let her be for God knows that all that she thinks about is her prayers.... her devotion is amazing....

if you had happened to tell her that reciting some verses is good... she would religiously do it everyday... so happened that my cousin told us to recite three of Allah's names 33 times each as a prayer for my son who was in the NICU when he was born...she held onto it ever since....my boy was about more than 2 years old, running around her when she told me that she still reads that for him...
she recites tons of verses and doa and zikir each day.... you can see her reciting something or holding on to the rosary...according to my mum, she memorized almost all that my grandmother recites since my granmother would read it aloud after every prayers since my mum was a lil girl.  i can relate to it coz my daughter has memorised almost all my zikirs and surahs that i read with them... she could recite surah alfatihah at the age of three since i read it from the day she was born...

my almarhum grandfather, her husband was a religious man too and she held on to his words for more than 30 years after he had passed away... one of which is drinking of olive oil from their own palm while reciting selawat.... she never had stomach problems...i have never heard that she was sick until her last two years of her life...one contributed by a few falls.  she believes in ayurvedic and yes, i think she was much stronger than a lot of us. i remember her first was when i went to india, i had stomach problem mainly indigestion caused by too much eating when we visited houses of relatives.  they were sure to serve us vadai fried in the kind of oil that my tummy couldn't tolerate....and guess what she gave me... raw murengaikirai and salt that she rubbed in between her palm and extracted the juice... what happened next.. i vomited out everything out and cured altogether... now i recall that my dad was explaining the goodness of the leaves to my husband... it  cures even snake bites as it has the ability to defuse poisonous element in our body...

apart from this, there are so many of her grandmother medicine that i must document somewhere so that i am able pass on to my generations...

my only regrets... whenever i was around, she used to ask me to eat with her...sometimes she would scold me for not eating yet at it would have been past mealtime by the time she eats and i still wouldn't have eaten. almost all the time i would decline... i wish i had eaten with her more often... my other regret is that i wasn't beside her when she breath her last.... there was an sms that i didn't notice since i was at home on a public holiday....i so remember the day...

she has returned to the Creator on the 6th of February 2012 at 5.50pm.  i was in KL and i looked at the time in my car and my heart said...call home to check on my grandmother... my brother answered and he said ummamma poitangge..(grandmother has left).  i went numb at that moment...it was exactly what i felt when my gynae said honeystar is gone forever.... i called again and my brother answered more composedly.  i called home exactly the moment after she has just left... i cried and cried in the car and i was driving....

i thought of my last moment with her....  it was the time there were so many people visited her.  i spent every weekend at my parents house last november and december since my children were at my parents'.  it was a blessings in disguise for i was able to serve her as much as i could.  i used to sit with her cleaning her... telling her to zikir anything, giving her the rosary, letting my children around her when i fed her, cleaning her hair... my last day with her, i sat beside her teaching her to recite the kalimah syahadat and recite yaasin for her...i kissed her for i felt it could be my last.... it was....

the pain of her departure, i still feel because i was the unfortunate one who wasn't by her side when she departed this world...but the way she departed the world was so beautiful..... my mum wanted her really cleaned up and cure her bedsore so she admitted her at the ipoh specialist hospital. my younger brother who worked continents away was with her at the point of admission.  my sister who is a nurse, my elder sister and my younger brother took care of her.  at the same time, my dad was ill and came back for good from sabah. it was my elder brother and family who brought him back. and that made almost everyone back at my parents...  her bedsore was cured and she got discharged.  my sister noticed that she had slight fever that morning and her oxygen level went down a little.  she was back at my parents' house.  my brother was getting ready to go back to KL, my sisters and their family were around and there came a visitor... my mum brought him to visit my grandmother and everyone were around her...while my mum stroke her hands and talk to her and teach her the kalimah shahadat... she murmured as my mum recited.  she looked at everyone and my sister saw the glimpse of her departure... her eyes rolled up towards the kiblah direction and it closed forever.... her mouth sealed shut.  it all happened in silence.... so peaceful....

dear ummamma, i wasn't there, maybe because i do not want to remember you that way... i remember you the way you smile, the way you put your hand over your nose, the way you eat betel, the way you smile mockingly at your sister in law (my other grandmother), the way you scold me sometimes, the way you innocently listen to me and drank the drink i mixed for you on the aeroplane, the way you scolded my son for making your grand daughter tired of running after them, the way you cared for the whole world... i love you...

may Allah grant you jannah for you were the angel on earth...for no one shall ever see any flaws in you...

my thoughts of my grandmother linger still... i dream of her too... my mum dreams of her too... when i was about to lose honeystar whom i conceived only a few weeks after my grandmother passed away, my mum dreamed of her with a little baby....
she is one of the loves of my life....my ummamma blessing me during my wedding...

my ummamma's resting place....