Am I Ready — and Willing — to Die?

I have cancer. I live in a nursing home. I’m 88 years old. Just as my death seems to be on its final and very welcome approach, my ego rears its ugly head and I realize — “Wait, God! I’m not qualified yet!!!”

Allow me to explain. I have a dear, generous in heart, and consistently forgiving friend, who has been helping me for a very long time. Most of her working life she has been a college professor, so she loves to teach. Almost every time she tries to solve one of my problems related to computers, she explains what she is doing in detail. 

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But I have a mild degree of attention deficit disorder (ADD) and have never been able to pay attention to details, so, I lose concentration and patience while she explains. This consistently creates clashes between us, the last of which happened a few days ago. This has always been a source of shame and guilt for me, which is very uncomfortable and unsettling. 

So, after the last episode of my ungratefulness, I realized clearly that my ego is working full time — maybe overtime.

My problem is when my friend tries to teach me something, I am only interested in seeing the problem solved, not in learning a detailed lesson, so inwardly I resent her teaching. Also, when she teaches me something in detail, I lose interest and even consider her teaching a put-down. My false pride kicks in, and I behave badly toward a dear friend who is spending her time and energy to help me. 

Maybe that is why I am not yet qualified to die — I haven’t learned the spiritual lessons my soul needs for its existence in the next world, as the Baha’i teachings ask us all to do: “… the intended and especial function of man is to rescue and redeem himself from the inherent defects of nature and become qualified with the ideal virtues of Divinity.”

Those divine virtues, I’m absolutely sure, include patience, loving-kindness, and consideration for others — which I sometimes lack.

I’m hoping that I’m on my way to attaining those required qualifications for entry into the next world, and SOON. I am truly eager to achieve them.

Physically, I feel OK these days, to my surprise. Also, to my surprise, I don’t like feeling OK. I want to go home. I still have the urge to try to make up God’s mind to get me on that homebound train, but I don’t want God to laugh at me too much. It is hard, though, to live in limbo, between this world and the next. 

Lord, please give me patience — but give it to me yesterday!

I think I’m resigning myself to the idea that I won’t be boarding that glory train anytime soon, so I am settling on working on translating my BahaiTeachings articles into Farsi, so my Persian friends and extended family can read them. One of the things I am struggling with is how to find a way I can find free illustrations for my essays. 

Doing this work has once again brought me face-to-face with the miracles of daily life. A couple of weeks ago, I felt disappointed in my search for good illustrations, thinking maybe I should just give up, because I could not get any help, and with my impatient nature, it was very hard for me. During one of my late night walks when I pray, I had a heart-to-heart talk with God and asked Him, “If I am supposed to do this work, please open the door for me, and if I am not supposed to do it, please close the door for me in a way that even with my thick head, I can understand.” 

I was almost fully resigned to having His “NO!” answer. Well, a miracle happened, and a door that I never saw before opened wide, in the form of a longtime friend and his beautiful wife who came to visit me. Upon my telling him about my situation, in a few minutes he introduced me to ChatGPT. 

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That led me to the whole new world of artificial intelligence, and I think I can even, with some help from another angel, learn how to create free illustrations to go with each of my articles. I have never dreamed of something with such ease of use. I am so grateful to God, and keep repeating Baha’u’llah’s prayer for assistance — which for me, is also a prayer of thanksgiving:

My God, my Adored One, my King, my Desire! What tongue can voice my thanks to Thee? I was heedless, Thou didst awaken me. I had turned back from Thee, Thou didst graciously aid me to turn towards Thee. I was as one dead, Thou didst quicken me with the water of life. I was withered, Thou didst revive me with the heavenly stream of Thine utterance which hath flowed forth from the Pen of the All-Merciful.

O Divine Providence! All existence is begotten by Thy bounty; deprive it not of the waters of Thy generosity, neither do Thou withhold it from the ocean of Thy mercy. I beseech Thee to aid and assist me at all times and under all conditions, and seek from the heaven of Thy grace Thine ancient favor. Thou art, in truth, the Lord of bounty, and the Sovereign of the kingdom of eternity.