Maman Muba: Remembering a beloved mother

From God we came, and unto Him we shall return. It is with a heavy heart, deep sense of loss and utmost confusion I write this piece to once again mourn the death of our beloved mother, Hajiya Binta Isyaku who died on Saturday, January, 30th at a hospital in India after battling with illness for almost a year. Exactly a week to my mother’s death, I kept having a feeling like something bad had happened or was about to happen. Knowing fully the condition I left my mum in, I quickly put a call across to my immediate elder sister whom I know definitely is together with her, to let me speak to her. The call turned out to be the last time I heard the sweet voice of my mother! The little conversation we had gave me some relief even though she didn’t give me a positive answer when I asked of her health, telling me that they would be leaving for India soon. She still managed to ask me how I am coping with work and even wished me success. Those were her last words to me.
On January, 30th, 2016 at around 10:20am I received the shocking call from my sister telling me that Hajiya is no more! When she called, I heard her crying but I never thought she was going to break such heartbreaking news. I calmed her down and told her crying isn’t the solution, but prayers.
As one who lost his father when less than a year old, my mum was both mother and father to me. She lived a fulfilled life, worth emulating, one we are all proud of. First, God blessed her with parents and siblings she was very proud to have, being why she made sure we visited them regularly.
Second, among the blessings that God bestowed upon her, was a good husband. Whenever she tells us about our late father, she always shed tears. We would hear around our neighbourhood about how kind our father was, so we had a good picture of his kind-heartedness, giving us an inkling of the pain she feels whenever she remembers him. But I see it as being that God destined that they would not live their lives together, but in the hereafter. She was buried next to him, as was one of the things that Nana Aisha, wife of Prophet Muhammad (S.A.W.) longed for, to be buried next to her husband, even if it was not destined.
Furthermore, God blessed her life with eleven children, and kept all of us alive throughout her lifetime. Not only that, he blessed us in such a way that none of us have gone astray, He gave her the wisdom to train us to benefit not only her, but the entire world. She was proud of each and every one of us. She encouraged us, corrected our errors and wished us well.
She has shown us true love, which we will miss and remember forever, even as she sacrificed her own happiness for ours. Though we know it is impossible to repay a fraction of what she has done for us, we are happy that she left this world knowing she left behind children who are responsible, the way she raised us to be.
It is said that behind every successful man is a woman. To us, that woman is none other than our mother, because I believe her prayers, thoughts and encouragement led all of us to where we are today. I remember when I was in nursery school, and as a form of encouragement to me, she said ‘From today, you are now my teacher and whatever you learn in school, you will teach me when you come back home.’ That encouraged me to be more attentive in school, so that I could close and go back home to teach my ‘student’.
God also blessed her the best in-laws anyone could hope to have. Never in her lifetime have any of her children witnessed any problem in their matrimonial homes. Absolute and mutual respect is what is between her and her in-laws. If I am to say half of the life of my mother, what I would need to write is not an article, but a whole book. This is because her life was full of greatness, and she indeed lived for all. I mean, she lived a humble life full of piety, she placed God before everything, and she is very religious and kindhearted. Every time I picture my mother since her demise, I see her in the position of prayer. Even with the severe sickness she endured, she prayed on time. Every last day of Ramadan, she would wake me up in the night for prayer.
My mother wass an ardent listener of educative radio programmes, especially the preachings of late Sheikh Ja’afar Mahmud. She also couldn’t afford to miss programmes of Sheikh Kabir Gombe on Sunnah TV as she always said he extend his messages in a very jovial manner.  
Once, I asked my mother how a person would feel if he loses a loved one to the cold fingers of death. ‘Will you be afraid of the person?’ I asked, to which she replied in the negative. She said, also: ‘’You will feel the person’s genuine love in your heart and you will long to see them again.”
Certainly, mum, we are feeling pain unlike any we have ever felt in our lives. We didn not cry out loud, or wail, as we learnt through you that the Prophet forbids that. We laid you to rest close to Dad not amidst cries but amidst prayers to God to forgive you, have mercy on you and admit you into the highest rank of paradise. Unite again with our father and dwell in the gardens under which rivers flow before we join you. Amen                 
Lawan wrote in from Osogbo, Osun State.