DefSufi

Praise be to Allah! For the first time in 14 years of being Muslim, I made it completely through the Ramadan fast. It's not that I haven't tried before, but that I tried and failed miserably. The first year, I lasted 4 days. It ended with a rather perilous left turn across oncoming traffic into a Hardee's after I realised I was losing consciousness at the steering wheel. I pulled up to the drive through and ordered the first thing I could read: a sausage and egg biscuit and milk. I spent the rest of the day crying.

The second year, I lasted 2 days before ending up in the ER. The third year, I lasted 3 days, and remember nearly crawling across the floor to the 'fridge to grab a yoghurt and an apple.

The issue: hypoglycemia. Or so I was repeatedly told. And so, I gave up on the idea of fasting, and did other things to make up for it, such as charity, being extra diligent about behaviour and company and whereabouts and prayer, etc.

But this year was different. And here's a BIG part of the reason why.

Last year, a couple of weeks before Thanksgiving, my mother was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer. She had been misdiagnosed and fobbed off for so many years that it was advanced when someone finally figured out that it wasn't "being old, being arthritic, part of the lingering effects of a stroke, fatty tumours, etc. etc." When they FINALLY got around to doing more than a standard chest x-ray, and then actually did a biopsy on the huge lump she had in her neck, the doctors had more than an "oh shit" moment. More than 7 years of complaints, and finally, FINALLY, someone figured out that it wasn't COPD, but lung cancer. And it was everywhere.

My mother had her first chemo session 2 days before Thanksgiving. Two days after Thanksgiving, she was in hospital after she collapsed at home. She spent the next 2 and a half months in hospital, and another 3 weeks in rehab before she came home... on her 78th birthday. She nearly died, time and again. First too much chemo (her first treatment was nearly 3 times the usual dosage), then bad heparin (Baxter later recalled contaminated heparin), then overmedication from pain meds (thank God for a doctor Borges who redid her meds and saved her life!). The nurses were either fabulous or fireable, depending on the day. There was more than one time when my dad, sister and I were raising hell at the nurses' station because Mum had either been neglected or mistreated or mismedicated.

We watched her go from a vegetable that the hospital wanted to shift to hospice (who didn't want to take her because they were afraid she'd live longer than 6 weeks!) so she could die, to a woman who walked out of rehab on her own power 3 months later when she finally got the right treatment. We watched her go back through chemo, in and out of hospital and rehab again thanks to CDIF, watched her go through gamma knife surgery to remove brain lesions. And she did all of this with courage, and even at times, grace.

Two and a half weeks before her death on the 31st of July, she did go to hospice, with the expectation that they would get her pain under control, and send her home. It was supposed to be 3 days. Then it was a week. Then 2. And then, it was over. She was adamant that my husband and I go on our holiday, we all expected her to be home by the time we got back. I was in an Elton John concert the evening she died. When we got back to the hotel and I saw the message light flashing on the phone in the room, I didn't even have to think about what it concerned.

My mother didn't want a memorial, or a funeral. She wanted cremation, and to be scattered over an area that she loved.

I watched her go through SO much, just to preserve her physical life. She did it many days in severe pain, and most days with a smile on her face. I got to take her out on the last shopping trip she went on, just 2 days before she went into hospice. It was a fun day out.

After seeing all that, how could I not take the challenge of Ramadan? After watching someone go through so much to preserve an earthly life, how could I pass up the chance to do SO LITTLE to preserve my eternal one? My friends remarked that it was a lot to ask, 30 days of no food or drink during 14 hours of daylight. In reality, how little, how VERY LITTLE it is that Allah asks of us during Ramadan. So little.

And so, I was determined to make it all the way through. I read whatever I could find about hypoglycemia and fasting, and followed the advice I found. Yes, I was hungry. Yes, I was thristy, Yes, I was tired. Yes, I was caffeine deprived. And some days I was all 4 at the same time, which was really when the challenge hit.

And I would pray. And I would think about my mum and how she made it through her ordeal until there was no ordeal left.

And I made it through the daylight hours until sunset. And from 1 Ramadan, until Ramadan was over.

Through my mother, I Iearnt just how tough a human being can be. And through Ramadan, I learnt just how NOT fragile I am. I learnt where my weak spots are, where I give in when I don't have to, what I can do to be stronger.

My mother's test came late in her life, and became the end of her life. I pray that it is a test that I never have to take.

But the test of Ramadan is one that I will now take over and over again. Until whatever comes, comes.

May Allah be pleased with my mother. May Allah be pleased with all of us, and have mercy and compassion on all of His creation.

Happy Holidays and celebrations to all of my readers who will be celebrating: Eid, Yom Kippur, Sukkot, Sohain, Diwali, the Birth of the Bab, and numerous holy days that  I have failed to mention.

As Red Skelton and Dave Allen said: "May God bless", and "May your God go with you."

Blessings.

Wishing all my Muslim brothers and sisters a Happy Eid! And a good Rosh Hashana to my Jewish friends and readers.

More later..... after I eat!

Blessings!

Ash-Shura 42:29 And among His signs is the [very] creation of the heavens and the earth, and of all the living creatures which He has caused to multiply throughout them.

"The maghrib alarm has gone off", I told my husband the other evening.

"What?"

"The maghrib alarm....I can hear the tree frogs, so it's time for evening prayers."

"Oh."

I had started noticing this fact a couple of weeks ago. It wasn't really conscious at first. Just the once in a while mental note that as I was making Iqamah I could hear the tree frogs outside the window. One evening, it occured to me to check the time for maghrib prayer and the tree frogs singing against my prayer schedule. Same time. Again the next evening, and the next. So far, the only night it's been wrong in the past couple of weeks has been the few days we were inundated by Tropical Storm Fay, when the little fellows were probably too wet and scared to do much of anything except cling to a tree.

There are also "fajr birds", those annoying mockingbirds, that seem to come to voice just before dawn. When we first moved into our house, it sounded like the phone was ringing about 30 minutes or so every morning before the alarm clock would go off. It drove me crazy until I figured out what it was, because the first few mornings I DID go to answer the phone. I still call them phone birds: wake up, Allah's calling!

Soon, there will be the sign of the new moon, and Ramadan will begin. In my 14 years of being Muslim, I have yet to make it through a full Ramadan fast. I have been severly hypoglycemic over the past 15 years or so, and a late meal has been known to nearly knock me to the ground, let alone a missed one. But I'll probably be tempted to try it again. Can I get past what are simply the signs of hunger and see if it's only that this time? Or will I let fear set me up for failure again, which is sometimes what I feel actually happens when I push meals off on a normal day (it's LATE! I'm going to DIE! (the heart races) SEE! I TOLD YOU!!!... is this panic or real?)

The little mental note in the back of my mind reads, "Try again."

That might be a sign. Wish me luck.

Blessings.

And an easy Fast to all my Muslim brothers and sisters!

My mother died this past Thursday. My husband and I were in Vegas, our first "to ourselves" vacation in more than 5 years. When we left, my mother was in hospice, with the expectation that the doctors would get her pain under control, and she could go back home after about a week, where she would spend the rest of the months that she had left.

But God had other plans, and on Thursday, when I walked into the hotel room and saw the flashing message light, I didn't even have to think about what it was for.

Growing up, I had a real love-hate relationship with my mum. She "had issues" as we say now, and they made her insecure, sometimes shrewish, often selfish.... traits that I also have learnt, and thankfully learnt to identify before they get more than a few words/actions into gear. When we first found out that not only did she have cancer, but that it was already stage 4+, I started to grieve then. I knew that it would be less than a year, and that it could get VERY ugly before it was over. I went through the "Oh shit, my mother is going to DIE!" to the "I didn't really ever even like her anyway", to deciding I DID really like her, and then just being sad for her that it was going to be so hard. Chemo. Radiation. Gamma knife. PET scan, MRI, X-ray, bone scan...over and over again.

There were good days... I took her out to shop for clothes just a few days before she went into hospice, and she was hurting but otherwise feeling quite well. And there were bad days.... early on, just after her first chemo treatment, she nearly died from what one doctor thought was over-medication which made her look and act like she had only a few days. People at the hospital were wanting to wearhouse her out to hospice at that point, and had we not all rallied around her, I imagine that it would have happened. And that it would have been a premature end for her.

She got out of hospital and rehab 10 weeks later, on her 78th birthday.

The past 5 years or so we had quite a different relationship from what we had when I was a kid. We could actually talk without one of us bursting into tears or screaming in anger. "I'm so glad we get along now", she said that last day we went shopping. "I guess we both just had to get older", I answered back. "Yep, and I'm glad we did it fast, I was beginning to lose patience", she said.

It was a long way from several years ago, when thinking about what the Prophet (pbuh) said, that heaven is at the feet of the mother. "He didn't know my mother!" was my first thought. But then again, maybe he "did". One thing that Islam taught me is that respect and loving attention are due some relationships even if you don't want to do it. In the winning video from Link TV last year, one of the people in the video is holding up a sign that reads "I visit my parents every weekend....even though they drive me INSANE!" I KNOW that feeling! But even acting out of obligation rather than affection, evetually, it led to the affection that I should have had as a kid. I grew to respect and even love my parents. Finally.

I miss my mum. But I know that she's moved on to the next life, and that her body no longer is in unendurable pain.

And so although I mourn her loss, I do so also with a sense of relief for her.

And I know I'll see her when it's my turn to cross over.

Blessings.