TAKE MY NAME WHEN YOU BREATHE YOUR LAST

"Neither seek death nor fear it, and when death comes to you it is converted into a stepping stone to the higher life." — Meher Baba

Mother died one month later. During her last weeks she suffered excruciating pain, as the cancer had spread all over her body. Baba constantly inquired about her health, comforting not only Mother, but the rest of us as well.

We watched helplessly, unable t do much to ease her pain. Suddenly, three days before she died, she became very peaceful, and I felt that she was no longer suffering physically. Smiling and pointing to different places in the room, she would ask, "Oh! Do you see Baba standing there?" Or she would say, "Baba is here. He's at my bedside." Seeing that Baba was giving her relief, we shared in her happiness.

The following day, however, she stopped seeing Baba and apparently experienced a terrible void, the agony of not seeing Him. She constantly urged us to send a telegramme to Baba and tell Him to come back, pleading, "Call Baba, call Baba." She would ask us, "Why has He disappeared?" This emotional pain went on for the whole day and was even worse than her physical suffering because there was absolutely nothing we could do to help her....

The third day she became very quiet, so weak she could not even lift her hand, and we had to put an ear to her mouth to hear her feeble voice. Her life was ebbing away.

That night, exhausted, I fell asleep by her bed. At midnight, hearing her voice shout "Baba!" I woke with a start, but my mother was fast asleep. Alert now I sat by her side. At about 4:00 in the morning she began taking Baba's name, her voice no longer weak. She repeated "Baba! Baba!" with such force that my whole body tingled. Her eyes were open, yet she saw nothing....

She went on calling aloud to Baba for forty-five minutes; then she lay quietly, and at 5:00 she slipped away. She had done what Baba had always told us to do: "Take My name when you breathe your last."