For one more day.
What would you do when you lost everything? Charley “Chick” Benetto was a sportsman and he wanted a career in sports. But he was never good enough or lucky enough. So he worked at other professions halfheartedly, while waiting for his big break which never comes. His father left their family and that had exacerbate the matter. He didn’t have a father figure in his family and what made things worse, he blamed his mother that his father left.
He got married and had a daughter. But him being himself, they got divorced and his wife remarried. The relationship was not close with the daughter. And when the daughter got married, they didn’t invite him. He only found out about it later. This was the deepest valley in his life. He couldn’t believe why his own daughter was ashamed of him to the extend that she didn’t even invite him to the wedding – this was the straw that broke the camel’s back. To the extend that he decided that he don’t want to live on the world anymore – he decided to take his life. He wanted to go back to where he lived as a boy and throw himself from the tower in his hometown. Husna, I read this book before I got you and I couldn’t relate why someone would go to the extend to take his life because his daughter did that to him. But having had you, I can understand the frustration and deep sadness that he felt. I hope that I won’t be bad enough for you to treat me like that.
So he decided to end his life at his hometown. He got himself drunk and drove there. But when he got there, he met with an accident. He’s in a semi coma. Some sort of that, it’s not clear what happened to him. He somehow managed to walk back to his old house, and guess who met over there? His own mother. His dead mother! She has been dead for eight years already. Now how’s that managed to happened, we don’t know. He told it as it is. That’s what he felt that way and that’s what saw.
He spent time with his mother that day. All throughout the time, he wonders why it’s happening to him. He knew that it is not possible, but it is happening to him at the time. It is interesting how he told stories about his mother. He now remembers how his mother raised him and treated him.
This is when the stories got interesting. His mother was quite a gal. He shared two sides of stories: examples of the time his mother stood for him, and examples of him not standing up for this mother.
It is sad to read how he had treated his mother. His mother were doing the best that she could in the her circumstances but he failed to see that. All throughout the story, we read again and again on how he mistreated his mother.
Husna, please treat your mother kindly. Talk to her well. Make her happy, no matter what. You will never know how much she loves and cares for you until the day you have your own child. It would make me sad if you talk harshly to her. There will come a time when you don’t agree with her. You would say that she’s not cool. She will not allow you to do this and that. She will stop you from wearing that dress with that top. She will screen your friends. You would hate her and God forbid, you would say things that would regret later. As what Charley “Chick” Benetto in this book would tell you. All that ibu will do is for your own good, out of her love to you.
Allah tells us to be good to parents. Especially to mothers. In Surah Maryam, Allah tells how Nabi Yahya treated his parents with goodness.
Verse 14: وَبَرًّا بِوَالِدَيْهِ وَلَمْ يَكُن جَبَّارًا عَصِيًّا
And kind to his parents, and he was not overbearing or rebellious.
I hope that we will train you well enough to understand the importance of being good to everyone. Lest you will regret the outcome.
I hope this book will be one of the books that you will read and take notice from it.
Bye Husna.