Whenever my Nana (maternal grandfather) is mentioned in my conversations with someone, I have noticed that it is almost always regarding a lesson that he left us with. Things that he said, things that he did silently, things we found out about only after he passed away many years ago.
Sometime after my Nana left the world, we were told that a lady came to his house looking for him, not knowing that he had passed. When she found out, she was distraught and started crying. And then she said that he was the one because of whom my household was running. Nobody knew this- not a single person- that my Nana financially maintained this lady’s and so many other households.
Only after my Nana had passed did we find that he had maintained so many people and their families. He wasn’t a very rich man. A professor at the University with a decent standard of living. But a man with a big heart. I remember people coming to him asking him for money, and he would just put his hand in his pocket or under his mattress (he always kept some money there), pull out whatever he found and just give all of it to the one asking him- without ever counting how much he gave them.
He was a firm believer in the philosophy that when you give from your right hand, your left hand shouldn’t know, and also in “doing business with Allah”. He always said that if you give in His way, He will always give you back manifold- besides the reward. And it’s true- it did always come back to him somehow, like an investment that always produced returns.
My Nana, may Allah grant him a high rank in Jannatul Firdaus, was an inspiration. He touched so many lives in his own ways. There was not a single person who heard of his passing who did not find himself grieving on some level. I hope to be able to implement his lessons in my life and impart them to my children, because if my children and I can become even a small percentage of what he was, I know that, inshaAllah, Allah will be pleased with us.
May Allah make him from among those who walk with the Prophets in Jannah. Aameen.
Ameen. I really like this. Jazakallah khair