type of the Master. This was borne out by the following incident. After his cremation, the Holy Mother was removing her ornaments, as a Hindu widow does on her husband's death. When she was about to put off her bracelets, she had a vision of Sri Ramakrishna appearing before her
1 and saying to this effect: 'What are you doing? I have not gone away. I have only passed from one room to another.' A vision of this kind must have been very reassuring to her grief-stricken heart.
Shortly after, Balaram Babu purchased a white cloth without borders, the widow's garment, for the Holy Mother, and requested Golap-Ma to hand it over to her. Golap-Ma, thinking of the sudden reaction it may have on the Holy Mother, remarked, 'O my God! Who can give this white borderless cloth to her now?' But when she went to the Holy Mother with the cloth, she found that she had already torn off the greater part of the wide red borders of her Sari. From that time onward she always used to wear a cloth with thin borders in recognition of the Master's assurance that there was no death for him and therefore no widowhood for her.
Several of the householder devotees of the Master wanted to break up the establishment at Cossipore garden immediately after the Master's passing away. But Narendra Nath (later Swami Vivekananda) and other young disciples protested against this, as it would be a great shock to the Holy Mother to be asked to leave that place so soon. They wanted that she should be allowed to stay there for a few days more, and even offered to beg food for her, if necessary. So the establishment was retained for some days and the Master's
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1 Such experiences were repeated in her life as we shall see later on.