PETALING JAYA: It was no ordinary letter as it showed a mother’s sorrow about losing her 25-year-old son to cancer.

“When I looked at your grave, my heart ached with pain,” Permaisuri Johor Raja Zarith Sofiah Sultan Idris Shah wrote.

“I watched your father and brothers fill it up with earth while Boo and Inah stood near me. I looked at your brothers and counted three sons.

“Boo was beside me. There are five of you. Where was my fifth son? And then I realised it was you who was missing. I had forgotten you were beneath the mounds of earth.

“And I held up my hands and whispered, ‘from You we come, and to You we return. I return to You, O Allah, my son’. May you be with the righteous, my son.”

Raja Zarith posted the letter on her Facebook page yesterday, dedicating it to “my darling Lil” in reference to Tunku Laksamana Johor Tunku Abdul Jalil Sultan Ibrahim, who passed away on Saturday.

He was the fourth child of Sultan Ibrahim Sultan Iskandar and Raja Zarith.

The “Boo” mentioned by Raja Zarith is the youngest child, 14-year-old Tunku Putera Johor Tunku Abu Bakar.

“Inah” is Tunku Aminah Maimunah Iskandariah, 29.

Raja Zarith said she had “a thousand and one memories” of her son’s last days.

“I remember once, you closed your eyes and tears flowed onto your cheeks as you fought the pain, and I held your left hand and I wept, trying hard not to make any sound,” she wrote.

“I thought you could not see me cry because your eyes were closed but you knew, and you put your right hand over mine and patted it as if you were saying ‘don’t cry, I am all right’.”

Raja Zarith said she remembered all the text messages Tunku Jalil sent to her.

“When I wrote that I was praying for you, you wrote back that you had prayed too, but that you had asked Allah to let you bear the burden of my worries.”-thestar