If Today Be Sweet
by Thrity Umrigar
What happens to us when we are 65 years old and our spouse dies? How do we continue to go on? How do we find peace, much less joy? Our lives are disrupted emotionally, and we feel deep, unrelenting loss. We must find a way to go on without the person we have loved and found comfort with for many years. For many of us, we continue to live in the house where we have lived with our spouse, surrounded by family living nearby. For others, we move to a different town to be near family. Our lives are never the same, but the familiarity of our surroundings helps us to some extent.
When her beloved Rustom died suddenly of a heart attack, Tehmina Sethna had no family living nearby in Mumbai, where she and her Rustom had lived since they were married so many years before. Her only child, a son, Sorab, now lived near Cleveland, Ohio, in America. He had insisted that she go and live with him and his American wife and their son, Cookie, and following his direction, she had done that. Now, her American visa was soon going to expire, and she had to make a decision whether to continue to live in America, or return to Mumbai.
How does she make that decision? What are her thoughts, her feelings? She is an intruder in the home of her son and daughter-in-law; she feels it, and they feel it. She is lost in a foreign country that feels completely alien to her. She longs to return home, to her home, to her belongings, her friends, the place where she feels completely at home and at peace. But she also longs to remain near her only remaining family, her son, her daughter-in-law, and little Cookie.
Feeling desperately torn and completely unable to make a decision, she asked for guidance from Spirit, and He was quick to respond.
She was called on to come to the aid of two little boys who were living temporarily next door with an abusive mother. When their mother beat them and then left them at home, she rescued them and took them to her kitchen for cookies. And when little Cookie called the police, she was placed in the position of having to report the incident. When the incident was printed in the newspaper, she quickly became a celebrity, and in the process, helped her son to gain some recognition at work, making him feel happier and more welcoming of her. Her decision seemed clear, she must stay in America near her family, rather than return to Mumbai.
This book was very shallow and not a great book at all. However, the story described a fictional incident in which a woman who needed Spiritual help was given the help that she needed. Because of that, I found the book satisfying.
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