September 7, 2015 Monday: Mother As I Saw Her (Being Reminiscences of Holy Mother Sarada Devi)
7-September-2015 (Monday)
Mother As I Saw Her – Swami Saradeshananda
The Last Days of the Mother – 2
A certain disci0ple-son often came from the Belur Math to the Udbodhan to have a Darshan of the Mother from a distance atleast. Seeing her peaceful countenance and loving grze full of kindness in spite of her emaciated body, he would be momentarily pacified. Nevertheless he would return with a heavy heart. The Mother’s health had completely broken down. The photo of the Master had been moved to another place, and the Mother’s bed made on the floor. Everybody’s heart was filled with a feeling of hopelessness, anticipating that the worst might happen any moment. One evening when the above-mentioned son went there just before a downpour, he found that the Mother had been helped to a sitting posture by her daughters who were all standing round her. At dusk the Mother with the help of others just raised her arms a little, keeping them straight, and thus made Pranam to the Master. Seeing those beautiful round arms of hers, which had bestowed on them so many boons and assurances, now reduced to mere skin and bones, her son’s heart was pained to the very core. He could not keep looking at them for long. Those hands by which the Mother had blessed her sons so much, by which had given them Prasad and fed them so many times, filling their minds and hearts with her love and affection – alas! to what a state were they now reduced! That heavy Ananta Balai (the bangle that always adorned the wrists of the Mother) had now become so loose that they had to be tied to her wrist with strings. Seeing this, the late Balaram Babu’s daughter got a pair of bangles made, fit for a small girl, and put them on the Mother’s wrists instead. These were with Mother till the very end and even when the last rites on her pure body were performed.
[Mother As I Saw Her (Being Reminiscences of Holy Mother Sarada Devi) – Swami Saradeshananda. Translated by Prof. J. N. Dey. Sri Ramakrishna Math, Mylapore Madras-600004: p 196 – 197]
