How to Bridge the Generation Gap?

A Word of Thanksgiving

The Father

My beloved child! Now that my hair has turned white and my strength is weakening and daily sunset reminds me of the sunset of my life, I am most proud that I have a child like you! And I am most happy that I have raised a child like you!

Undoubtedly, in the moments of my life, when my breaths are numbered, I wish to open my eyes and my heart of you. Alas! then at that time my tongue will be failing and my strength will disappear, I shall be looking around to find some way out and find someone to interpret my inner thoughts, but I will not be able to do so. [^1]

And hopelessly, I will gaze at you I will give thanks to Allah, who granted such an opportunity, and such a blessed moment, so that I could tell you all there is to say. And to take a load off my mind.

The Child

I also give thanks to Gracious Allah for the opportunity to be able to hear the heart-to-heart words of kind hearted father, s this is a rare gift that is not granted to everybody and Allah does not bestow it upon each and every one.

[^1]: The last moment of life are described by the commander of the faithful Imam Ali (as) in Sermon No.225 Nahjul-Balagha as follows: (Tr) “Thus, a struggle between treatments and diseases started and continued and diseases succeeded in a way as if the treatments were meant to enhance them till the physician found that the art of medicine could no more help. The attendants getting tired started behaving negligently. The nurses and attendants were so tired and disgusted that they would not even describe the condition of patient if anybody enquired to them. They also kept the patient in dark about his condition; they disagreed among themselves, some of them were of opinion that the condition of the patient might be serious but he was passing through a crisis and he would recover; while others held that he was fast sinking and would not recover, that his death was matter of a day or a few hours; and then they tried to console each other. And all that time the patient was hovering between life and death he felt that he was to part with his friends and relation, he felt that he was suffocating, that he could only breath in short gasps and his mouth was getting dry. He could hear them speaking to him and lamenting over him, some of those lamenters were his dearest relatives and some others were those who he respected. He wanted to reply to them, to say some endearing words or respectful sentences; he wanted to tell them some very important things, but he could not, his tongue and lips refused to form words and his throat refused to pass air or carry the voice. And thus the end arrived; of course, pangs of death are severe and its agonies can neither be described nor imagined.” Similar situation is further described in Sermon No; 112 as follows: “He can now neither hear nor speak, yet his power of sight is still with him, he can see people around him, can see their lips moving but cannot hear any sound. Death comes still nearer and gradually his sight also deserts him; shortly the soul parts with the body, leaving him a corpse amongst his relations, they now feel afraid to come near his dead body and want to keep away from it. He cannot now sympathise with the mourners nor reply to their call. He is then carried to his grave and surrendered there to the consequences of his faith and deeds. They shall not see him again till the day of resurrection, a day when all the human beings will be joined by those who follow them, it is the day when the span allotted to life on the earth will come to an end, and the will of God, to create and resurrect human being, will be carried into effect.”