I have three sons who have married. I won over the older one one day and wanted to stay with him. In the morning, I asked his wife to bring me water for ablution. I performed ablution, prayed, and poured the remaining water on the bed I was sleeping on. When the son’s wife came with morning tea, I said to her: My daughter, this is the state of the elderly. I urinated on the bed. The wife became agitated and made a fuss, and the old woman heard a stream of ugly words from her. Then I asked her to wash it and dry it and not do that again.
The old woman said: I pretended to suppress my anger, washed the bed, and dried it. Then I went to stay with my middle son and did the same thing. His wife became angry, screamed, and told her husband, who is my son, but he didn’t speak to her or even blame her or comfort me. So I left them to stay with my younger son.
I arrived at my younger son’s house and did the same thing I had done in his brothers’ houses. When his wife came to me with morning tea and I told her I urinated on the bed, she said to me: Don’t worry, mother. This is the state of the elderly. How many times did we urinate on your clothes when we were small? Then she took the bed, washed it, and perfumed it. I said to her: My daughter, I have a friend who gave me money and asked me to buy her jewelry, and I don’t know her size, and she is exactly your size, so give me your size.
Then the old woman went to the market, and she had much money, so she bought gold with all her money. Then she invited her sons and their wives to her house and brought out the gold and jewelry. She told them she had poured water on the bed and it wasn’t urine, then she put the gold in the hand of her youngest son’s wife—this daughter I will turn to in my old age and spend the rest of my life with. The two wives were struck with regret, the deepest regret. Is the reward for goodness anything but goodness?