It Was Time

I declared today as an off day for myself as a reward for working so hard for the past few days. The holiday was requested by myself, submitted to myself and approved by myself. No question asked. Yipee!! Ms Myself is such a generous boss!

This morning, I loitered at Kompleks PKNS in Shah Alam. I wanted to find malay and hindi movie vcds to be sent to Intan and a cousin in Kent. Where else would I be able to find the whole collection of weepy sarokhan and rosyamnoor’s movies if not at a malay dominant shopping complex?

I got distracted by a book store. Went in and found a gem. The gem is titled ‘Sajak-sajak Saleh’ and ‘Poems Sacred & Profane’ (yes, two titles, two languages but one book) by who else but Salleh Ben Joned.

Reading the book on the train-ride to office (yes, despite the day being declared as a non-working day), I wept as I felt his pain in Ria, a poem written in the memory of his daughter, Maria.
‘Now you are dead, I want to dream
Your physicality
Back into this house
In which you hardly lived.
Defiantly, I filled the rooms
With your laughing faces, defiling
The ritual of denial
I’d been taught to observed.
…
You were nearer to me, my Ria,
Than my own jugular vein.’

To lose a parent is heartbreaking but I guess losing one’s child is far more painful. But who am I to grade pain and sorrow?

I remember clearly the day my father left. It does not feel like a memory, it feels more like watching a scene in a movie with all too-familiar faces playing in it, so surreal was the day.

I remember being able to tell that death was about to visit us on that particular day. It was hari raya and my newly wed sister was to fly to Sarawak for honeymoon. When my brother did not want to go with us to the airport, a voice in my head said, ‘but you will be left alone when we die’. For some reasons, I was so certain that we would all die that day in a car crash. There was no fear, just little butterflies in the tummy. I dressed with care, even making sure that I had put on decent underwear (did not want to be caught dead with torn undies!).

Abah insisted that Mak sit at the back. He wanted me to be next to him and I was more than happy to oblige. The trip to the airport was uneventful. Abah was not in a hurry to send off my sister. He was a bit heartbroken when my sister got married. To Abah, Along was still too young. In his eyes, we would always be his little girls. Along did grow up too fast. And I knew that Abah missed her.

On the way back, Abah drove faster than usual. This was not like him. He was always a patient driver the kind that keep the speedometer at a speed that the police would approve. Clearly he was rushing to be home. And he asked me to help remove his shoes and socks. All this was done while he was driving. I braced myself for a crash, a swerve, a skid but it did not happen.

We reached home intact and the death warning wisped away from my thoughts. Oh, not today then, I thought. You see, the fear of losing my parents was always at the back of my head for as long as I could remember. As a kid, I would be sitting by the window of our kampong house nursing my worry as I wait for their return every time they went away. My prayers were always, ‘God, take ME first before you have to take them, for I am a weakling. I don’t want to live in a world without them.’

Abah did his solat and sat watching tv with me. Soon, a friend came for raya and Abah asked me to get the guests drinks. And when I handed him his glass of sirap, he looked down into the glass and refused it, ‘ada semut’ he said. I went back to get him another glass of sirap and as I approached him in the living room, he looked at me, smiled and lied down. The guests laughed and Mak told him to sit. He did not get up. Eyes still on me, he kept on smiling. And I knew. It was time.

And he died then. Just like that. Gaze fixed on me, and a smile. And I died many painful deaths.

It was a circus after that. I called 999 but the operator said, nobody responded because it was after all hari raya, a neighbor rushed us to the hospital just so a Doctor could pronounce his death officially. And Abah felt so cold and that smile that smile that smile...

When he was taken home after that, laid in one corner of the house, I curled up next to him and spent the night watching him smile in his deep sleep, willing him to wake and say it was all just a big fat joke.

Faces came and left. Hugged me and kissed me. And they told me not to feel, ‘Tuhan sayang dia lebih dari kita..’ they said and that got me angry. It was like telling me, that I did not love my Abah enough. And his death was a punishment. And I got angry and I stayed angry at God for many many years. The years after his death was of confusion and anger.

I was 21 then, just graduated from ITM. And I wanted so much to be able to afford buying him better shoes and send him to Haj and graduated from a proper university with jubah mortar hat and all. The list of things that made my heart ghalat. Wouldnt it be easier if he were to be sick and suffer for months so i had the time to do my bakti to him and in the process be more prepared for the time when it does arrive? His death seemed to be easy. Maybe it was easy, but only for him. Not for us. We were not prepared. But then again, when would anyone be prepared for death of the loved ones?

Such was my traumatic experience of losing Abah. He was only 48!

I am a parent now. As I prostate my small self to God, my prayers remain, ‘God, take ME first before you have to take them, for I am a weakling. I don’t want to live in a world without them.’ Except my ‘them’ now means my Mom, Sis, Bro, hubby and children.