Age seemed to have accentuated the tenderness of her loving heart, and to
have widened still further the range of her sympathies. The sight of
appalling suffering around her steeled her energies and revealed such
potentialities that her most intimate associates had failed to suspect.
The ascension of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, so tragic in its suddenness, was to her a
terrible blow from the effects of which she never completely recovered. To
her He, Whom she called ‘Áqá’, had been a refuge in times of adversity. On
Him she had been led to place her sole reliance. In Him she had found
ample compensation for the bereavements she had suffered, the desertions
she had witnessed, the ingratitude she had been shown by friends and
kindred. No one could ever dream that a woman of her age, so frail in
body, so sensitive of heart, so loaded with the cares of almost eighty
years of incessant tribulation, could so long survive so shattering a
blow. And yet, history, no less than the annals of our immortal Faith,
shall record for her a share in the advancement and consolidation of the
world-wide Community which the hand of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá had helped to fashion,
which no one among the remnants of His Family can rival.
Which of the blessings am I to recount, which in her unfailing solicitude
she showered upon me, in the most critical and agitated hours of my life?
To me, standing in so dire a need of the vitalizing grace of God, she was
the living symbol of many an attribute I had learned to admire in
‘Abdu’l-Bahá. She was to me a continual reminder of His inspiring
personality, of His calm resignation, of His munificence and magnanimity.
To me she was an incarnation of His winsome graciousness, of His
all-encompassing tenderness and love.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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