Forgiving Others — and Myself — While I’m Dying

As I keep reminding myself, inner peace is like a fragile child that needs to be protected and nurtured. Obviously, despite my reminders, I forget to do it myself. Oh, well! 

I suppose I can hide behind the shield of “I’m human, and I make mistakes.” 

I made those mistakes, I think, by being too lax in my spiritual vigilance. Hopefully, I will do better, and I must do better if I want to earn a precious piece of property in the next world (LOL!)

RELATED: 3 Simple Steps for Finding Forgiveness

Recently, I came across this story about Baha’u’llah, the prophet and founder of the Baha’i Faith, regarding the shortcomings of others:

I was present at [Baha’u’llah’s] blessed House in Akka one morning and heard Baha’u’llah explaining that “man is not infallible,” but that “God is the All-Forgiving” in the same way that God is the “Concealer.” He added, “so should the believers be forgiving if they find faults in one another. Tell them not to be concerned only with themselves, but to centre their attention on the Cause of God. That which is pleasing unto God is unity among the believers.”  

This excerpt about forgiveness comes from a book called “The Stories of Baha’u’llah” written by Dr. A. Furutan, which was “adapted from the memoirs of Haji Muhammad-Tahir-i-Malmiri, who attained the presence of Baha’u’llah in Akka in 1878 and remained there for nine months.”

I am so glad that I was fortunate enough to read this story and, once again, try to take a deep look at myself in the mirror. In that mirror, I see how much work I have to do, how much inner transformation I have to go through — and how little time I have left.

This all becomes more crucial because I’m dying here in my nursing home — in fact, I’m amazed, and my doctors are amazed, too, about how long I’ve lived past my prognosis. I just had my 88^th birthday, but we all live on borrowed time, and mine is quickly running out, which gives me a special sense of urgency about trying to repair my inner faults. The cancer I have will do its deadly work, and on some days, I can really feel it — but in the meantime, I have to do the spiritual work on my own character, forgiving myself and others. This quotation from Baha’u’llah’s writings sums it up:

Great indeed is the blessedness of the wayward one who hath rushed to the dayspring of your guidance, the slumbering one who hath been awakened through your remembrance, the dead one who hath been stirred by the breezes of your utterance and adorned with the ornament of life beneath your shadow, the seated one who hath arisen in your service, the eloquent one who hath celebrated your praise and turned to the fountain of your generosity, and the rebellious one who through your intercession hath reached the ocean of forgiveness.

Despite thinking deeply about my impending departure, this week was a fun week for all of us. Once a year, there is a National Nursing Home Celebration Week, where all the owners, administration and office people, and the staff of all departments perform something for the residents, such as music and lip-singing. On one of those days, we were entertained by a REAL magician. 

I have never seen a magician except on TV. I sat maybe five feet from the magician, and watched him very observantly. There was no way I or anyone else could figure out what he was doing — it was truly amazing. 

But later the same day, I had another attack of blurred vision, which again made me apprehensive. Fortunately, it lasted only about 10 minutes. That attack helped me realize that the true magician is the Creator, who made these human bodies we all have through the long, patient process of evolution, and gave us the potential to live in this physical stage of existence for up to and even past an entire century.

When I was a nurse in Iran, I worked in the poorest hospital in the capital city. At the time I was in my early 20’s, but the median age of the population was 35, and 50 was considered old age. Now, here I am in my 88^th year, still alive and alert. Amazingly, there are some people (mostly females) over 100 here, and they still have a real zest for living.

I used to think that I would be old, poverty-stricken, alone, and in poor health by the age of 50. I am old and in poor health, but not in the abject way I had imagined in my 20s. I’m not alone and not in need of food stamps. I’m happy and a little chagrined, thinking about how arrogant I was to imagine that I knew what my future would look like! 

I’ve concluded that I am truly a slow learner — because I still think I know what will happen to me tomorrow. I think I know when I will go to my final home, and God still laughs at me for my presumptions. When will I ever learn? I have no idea what His plans are for me — and neither does anyone else.

Here’s a silly example: because of the spread of my cancer, something has happened to my skin — I’ve become sensitive to the environment, to the temperature and the level of humidity, so my skin can sometimes feel like I am in the Sahara at noon time during July — which means I have developed a sensitivity to the material of my clothing. Weirdly, the only material I can tolerate is 100% polyester. 

Who knew? I used to think that wearing anything not made of cotton would be regarded as a violation of the 12^th commandment of fashion. With this sensitivity, though, I had to give away all my cotton clothing and try to get clothes made from polyester. My loved ones had a difficult time finding clothes I could wear. After a while and a diligent search by my friends, we found a polyester caftan, and it felt good. Then, I was so blessed that my bestest friend found another six of them, and another friend found two more. 

RELATED: Death: Summoned to a Reckoning

Now I’m the most fashionable 88-year-old dying-of-cancer nursing home resident you can imagine! My new caftans look really elegant, and I wear them and prance around and get lots of oohs and aahs from my fellow residents — while I’m seeking forgiveness for my ignorant presumptions and whatever wrong I may have done in this world. 

Do you see what I mean? I could never have predicted these events in a million years. 

What can I learn from this turn of fate? What does my unexpected reprieve from my own death tell me? It tells me, as the writings of Baha’u’llah confirm, that none of us knows what God has in store for us:

This is the infallible Balance which the Hand of God is holding, in which all who are in the heavens and all who are on the earth are weighed, and their fate determined, if ye be of them that believe and recognize this truth.