Forgive me..

I had a friend, or a colleague I might say. She was 4 months pregnant when she was diagnosed with breast cancer. Doctors couldn’t do radiotherapy or chemotherapy because they didn’t want to affect the baby. Friends advised her to abort the baby but she refused. Friends talked to her husband with hope that he could advise his wife into abortion. Friends were surprised to learn that it was her husband who actually refused to allow his wife to do abortion with a reason- the embryo has become a complete fetus . Most friends blamed the husband for being selfish, ignorance, cold-hearted and compassionless. The husband remained calm. After few months, the baby was born, lifeless. A day after that, the mother died. I attended her funeral. I saw her final face. She looked very calm. So did the husband.

There are few things that I’ve learnt from my friend’s story. I, once blamed the husband too for his willingness to let his wife suffer just to save the baby, an attempt which failed at the end. I blamed him for I’m a woman who dislikes to see other woman suffers. So, being a sympathetic person who is driven with emotion, I blamed the husband. But soon, I realized, or remember, to be accurate, in Islam, there are few things that could never control. One of them is death. We could never predict the date and the time that we will meet our Creator. Maybe tomorrow and maybe after 50 more years. We, humans, will never know. So, if my friend, even if she aborts the baby but she is destined to die on that particular day, with or without the baby, she will die too- maybe less painful. So, I decided to retract all the blames. And according to Islam, InsyaAllah, she will be in heaven since she was willing to sacrifice for her own child. InsyaAllah.

Besides that, I also did realize that, when I heard about her death, one thing that straight away crossed my mind. did I ever badmouthed her before, did I ever talk behind her back before, did I ever ‘mengumpat’ her before? And I realized that if I ever did, I will be in sin forever since I could never ask for her forgiveness anymore. I was very afraid since I do know that ‘mengupat’ is considered one of the biggest sins in Islam. Since she was in morning session, and I in the evening, we were hardly talked. So, I was quite sure that I hadn’t talk bad about her. Plus she was always a good person.

The story about my friend here prompted me to do this thing- to ask forgiveness from all people. If I ever done anything wrong, if I ever said something bad; directly or indirectly, I apologize, sincerely from the deepest of my heart. I’m afraid if I couldn’t ask anymore if my time or your time has come.