Conkers

This morning I woke up with a jolt. It doesn’t happen often, but sometimes you get the kind of dreams which are reminders, which help you on your journey. I had just woken up from one of those.I won’t divulge fully, but the premise was that I had committed a crime of some sort (I don’t know what it was) and I was given a penalty of death. A member of my family proceeded, with my permission, to shoot me in my chest. Dying and losing blood I was then rushed to some kind of religious hospital or clinic where people who were terminally ill went for consolation and advice, and to vent out their feelings. I remember seeing a parent with her kid and remember thinking ‘atleast he’s only an innocent child’, and feeling relieved that he would attain paradise in the after-life.But I was in a mess, with a hole in my chest. Sitting there dazed all I could think about was time. How I had wasted it, how I should have spent it in preparation for the death that was coming anytime now, how I wished I had more. How I had disappointed the people around me. Most of all though, how scared I was of meeting God and knowing that he might not forgive me for what I had done. I had no time to repent. My family and friends around me were either looking at me forlornly or else sobbing incontrollably.In the end, the situation was too much. I started screaming and eventually woke from the dream. I felt immediately for the bullet shell-hole in my chest but found none. I think I’ve checked about five times since for it. Looking back at first, I couldn’t help wondering at the absurdity of the situation I was placed in, but now I wonder if its really so absurd after all. I went downstairs and coincidentally was told of a film on last night that was about the death penalty. A conversation after that turned to a woman at the time of the Prophet (peace be upon him) who came to the Prophet having committed adultery, and asking for her punishment. The Prophet first asked her to have the baby. She did and returned to him, asking again for her punishment. He told her the second time to raise the baby for two years. She did that and returned, again asking for her punishment. It was then that the Prophet ordered her to be stoned to death. The next day he told the companions of this woman, and how he had a vision of her swimming in a lake in paradise. All because she had repented and sought forgiveness in this life, enough for God to feel she was sincere in learning her lesson. So the concept of the dream, no matter that I was shot by my own uncle, was not so absurd. In any case, I don’t think I can ever forget this, and I don’t know that I ever want to. Till next time I write, bye!