A Mother's Last Blessing and the Silent Guardian

Introduction:
In the unfolding journey of my life, certain moments stand apart, etched deep into memory and spirit. What follows is a personal account of one such moment — a ritual experience from my youth in Terengganu, entwined with the passing of my beloved mother. It is shared here not as a lesson nor a conclusion, but as a simple offering of truth, from one seeking heart to another.

A Mother's Last Blessing and the Silent Guardian

by Cheeseburger Buddha

When I was a young man living in Penang, I received the news that my mother had passed away back home in Terengganu. I rushed back, but by the time I arrived, the burial had already been done.
I missed her final farewell — a wound that never quite leaves the heart.

Yet my family, honoring our customs, had left a small bucket of water for me — water collected from the washing of her body before her burial.
It was customary for a late-arriving child to wash their face with this sacred water, a final symbolic act of love, farewell, and forgiveness.
And though my heart was heavy with sorrow and regret, I took the water and washed my face, feeling something deep and unspoken pass between us.

Before she died, my mother had told my eldest brother that she had forgiven me.
Given the tangled, sometimes painful history between us, those words struck me deeper than any blade.
Forgiveness is a strange and holy thing — it cuts, and yet it heals in the same breath.
Even if the words reached me after her passing, they reached.
They mattered.

Perhaps that is why, in my grief and confusion, I became insistent on undergoing a spiritual initiation that had long fascinated me — the calling of a Khadam, a spiritual companion, through the practices of Silat Seni Gayong, the martial art I was studying at the time.
My first Guru had gently refused me the opportunity, sensing, perhaps, that I was not ready for the discipline and weight such a bond would require.
But my second Guru, with the consent of the elders, agreed.

That evening, surrounded by about ten senior students and the Guru’s wife — who was known to have the gift of spiritual sight — I sat cross-legged on the cement floor.
My Guru took my hand and stroked it steadily as he asked me to empty my mind and recite verses from the Qur'an.

Around me, the seniors began rhythmically tapping the floor, the sound growing louder and faster, surrounding me, driving me inward.
Then, without warning, I heard a piercing, whistling sound — like a television gone haywire — followed by a sharp snap at my temple.
And then, silence.

I was no longer sitting on the floor — or perhaps, I was, but I had no sense of it.
I floated in a vast darkness.
My upper back and neck stiffened as if a great force had seized them.
Then my head was whipped violently from side to side, a movement far beyond my control.
It stopped just as suddenly.
Next, my whole body began to contort, stretching and twisting in ways that seemed impossible.
Possession? Or purification?
I did not know.

When the wildness ceased, I saw, with startling clarity, a woman walking up from the beach, carrying two large fish in each hand.
Behind a door, I noticed a blue bucket.
I asked for it to be brought and filled with water.
When it arrived, I washed myself, and slowly, gently, I returned to the ordinary world.
The floor beneath me.
The faces of my brothers in the circle.
The night air, heavy and still.

After that, I thought little of the experience.
Life swept me onward — across oceans, across decades.
But looking back now, I see more clearly:

That ritual, that possession, that vision —
They were not random phenomena.
They were my soul's passage through grief.
A sacred rebirth initiated by my mother's departure.
A silent pact with the unseen.

I realize now:
The Khadam I called forth that night — if he ever came — was not a being separate from me.
He was the deeper part of myself awakened.
The part of my mother, in her final blessing, forgave and released.
The part that could now walk alone, yet never truly alone, through the long and winding path of life.

And so, her forgiveness, the washing of my face, the vision of the woman from the sea —
all these were my Mother's Last Blessing.
Silent.
Mysterious.
Complete.

Alhamdulillah.
Namaste.
Peace.oth