Of Memories Changing With Time

Yesterday Ninie would've turned 31. It hurts a little less thinking about her now, although most of the time I don't want it to, because it is good to think of mortality and never take it for granted.

For her family though, I'm sure the pain is no less than it was the first day she was gone.

When I think about her, I think about the crazy times we had as teenagers, as newly wed young girls living in a foreign land; learning to cook, learning to care and be independent with our husbands, learning to be far from home, always talking about growing old and what'll we do in our future. How many kids we'd have, where we'd live and where we'd retire. Surely we'd still be friends then.

I think of her with fondness, feeling warm inside despite the usual sadness. The sadness has somehow changed into something different. It's changed into an appreciation for life, gratitude for the chance to continue learning and living, and the need to continuously better myself.

Dear friend, you will always be in my thoughts and I will pray for you, just as the Prophet (PBUH) had advised us to pray for our loved ones who are already in the next realm. In spirit, I wish I could send my hugs and kisses to you on this day that is your birthday. Another Al-Fatihah is valid on this day when the memory of you touches me again and demands changes in my life as always.

A Surreal Passing..

Only today did I find out about the passing of Puan Raden Galoh. She passed away eleven days ago. So caught up was I in worldly things that I forgot to google her progress for two weeks now.

I've been reading her blog for a very long time and always, always say a doa for her everytime I visit the blog.

Now she's gone to a better place. InsyaAllah.

Al-Fatihah to an amazing soul. Subhanallah, indeed life is so surreal-ly short.

Eternally Young

She would've turned thirty today. And we would've been friends for 25 years this year.

We always joked about how we'd be buddies in our old days and because we both loved to shop, we'd be those orang-orang tua who still shopped like mad. Wearing tudung to cover the greys in my hair (she wouldn't have greys coz she'd be too vain to let em go grey!) and grumbling and b.i.t.c.h.i.n.g. about everything in life amidst LOUD laughter (always happened whenever we were together), we'd be buds till we had great grandchildren.

Alas, it will never happen.

Eternally young she will be.

When she was alive, I always wished her a happy birthday at a belated date. I've always been very bad with dates. We'd meet or chat on the phone and I'd ask her; "Ohhhh yeahhhhhh, so what did you do for your birthday??"... and she'd laugh and say; "Too late again, Nina! I knew it!"..

But today thanks to those savvy reminders we have nowadays, I remembered it on time. On this exact day, not a day too late. I'd love to hear her laugh out loud in amazement if she was still around, to hear that I'd wish her on time, once and for all.

You're still and always in my thoughts, my dear old friend.

May your soul always be amongst the solehins.

Imagining The Morbid

I'm morbid. I'm the "harbinger of doom" whenever the subject of death comes up, as dubbed by a close friend of ours. I can't help it. Growing up, death was on my mind a lot. The ill treatments I got in school due to my ugly spinal braces (lets not go into that in detail) made me think that there must be a better place than this place we're in right now. As time went by and life got better, I often forgot death. Then Ninie passed away, and death is never really far away from my mind since then. But in a morbid sort of way, I wish I could treat death as a closer friend. For the truth is.. death is one thing in life that all of us can never avoid.

On days when the boys are singing their joyful songs and do something silly that makes me laugh, or when H hugs and kisses me and I feel like a true beautiful queen, and when I feel Gibran's body warm against mine while I sniff his boyish scent at bedtime.. death sometimes seems like it can never touch us.

Then H got into the accident last week and brings Ninie into my mind again. The split second of shock she must've felt at that last moment of awakeness, before her head slammed into the wheel and shattered everything that was Ninie, sending her deep into a comma. Then she left her mortal self behind for us to weep over. Thousands of times I often wondered, and still do; what on earth was it like for her at that split second... when the car slammed into the lorry.. her last moments of living. The truth is I cannot vividly imagine what she must've gone through. Because the scenes I imagine are so vividly frightening. Full of pain. So hideous.

Is death really all that? I don't know. Wallahualam.

All I know is that I cannot say how syukur I am that H didn't experience that during that split second when his car was hit, and he went into that skid, and when the car banged into the tree and broke the tree into half.

Ultimately noone can cheat death.

But for now, Allah, thank You for H's life. For our lives.

A Sudden Passing

Seems like life's been a bit reflective lately. As in.. life's demanding us to be reflective.

Yesterday afternoon BIL's aunt, Mak Usu, passed away at the age of 55 due to complications resulting from chemotherapy. To those of you out there without this piece of knowledge.. yes, chemotherapy can bring about many complications. Truly I am no expert. But I know more about cancer and its treatments now than if compared to 5 years ago. Because I have cancer in my family. So I can't afford to live blissfully in oblivion anymore.

A breast cancer patient we know recently spent a couple of weeks in HKL's ICU because of blood sepsis, a complication which emerged with her chemotherapy treatment. She is now okay, Alhamdulillah. Mak Usu on the other hand, wasn't as lucky. She had her chemo earlier this week and was discharged on Friday morning (if I heard correctly). Saturday morning saw her excitedly making breakfast for her family, as she so often did on weekends when all her kids were home. After breakfast she told her family that she felt fine, so they should go on with whatever they needed to do for the day. So her husband (Pak Usu) followed their youngest daughter to oversee repairworks at her apartment. During which she then called Pak Usu to say that she was having difficulties breathing. They all rushed home, only to find her laying on the bed. She had passed on.

May she be at peace with Allah Subhanahuwata'ala.

She was a good person. I was never very close to her, but she had kids who were in Melbourne when we lived in Melbourne. She was one of those people that you just can't ignore because she tried so hard to care for you. Whenever she was in Melbourne, she'd invite us over to her kids' house for a meal. She'd come over our apartment too. Like all young people we kids were content in our own little worlds. She wouldn't allow that. She was big on family and gatherings. Every Raya since we came back from Melbourne, she'd insist on having a big gathering at her house. We got to know her and her family pretty well. She was caring, with huge smiles and hugs for us whenever she saw us. She always had some sort of advise up her sleeves. Her nephews and nieces would get irritated at times. But now that she's gone, we can see how she's touched so many people's lives.

Not a dry eye in the house when we went to ziarah her jenazah yesterday. All the nephews and nieces who'd complain about how kecoh she was, mourned openly. A nephew who was always so manly and composed went up to her jenazah and would not let go of her hand until steered away. Her pregnant daughter (due in a couple of weeks) could not get out of bed due to shock and grief. H and I had to leave early to attend a planned gathering, but the scene could not escape me.

Night fell and sister called me to say that Mak Usu would be buried Sunday morning. Cousins, friends, nephews and nieces from afar travelled back to pay their final ziarah and to give support to her family.

Mak Usu won't be hearing this, but I need to say this out.

Thank you, dear Mak Usu, for forcing us to feel a part of the family when we were in Melbourne.
Thank you for all the great meals we had under your roof.
Thank you for touching so many lives in your memorable way.
And thank you God for giving us the opportunity to witness her gregarious spirit.

One final thing.

Prior to her passing, we had planned to visit her once she was healthier and settled once more at home. The opportunity never came.

If you know anyone who is ill, don't wait. See them today.

Everything Happens For a Reason

That's what they say. And yes, I do believe it's true.

At the Arabic class yesterday our teacher Mr. Bilal was telling us how he ended up in Malaysia. And Subhanallah, the story is nothing short of an amazing tale of intertwining fates. He was made redundant from a job as a computer specialist. He felt lost and decided to travel to Makkah for Umrah, during which he met a cousin of his whom he fell-in-fancy with. He married her, and they went back to Yemen where he was raised. In his desperate efforts for a job, he met the man who later played a vital role in bringing him here to Malaysia. And this all happened within the span of several months.

Dare I say something that has plagued my mind for years..?

If Ninie didn't die, I wouldn't be where I am now. If Ninie who was one of my oldest dearest friends, did not die, I wouldn't have decided to throw away all the care I had in the world and have a baby. If Ninie didn't die, I wouldn't feel afraid of having my life snatched away from me tonight or tomorrow.

Not a day passes that I don't think of her. I will always miss her. I miss her laughter and everything that made her unique. And I know one day I'll see her again when the time comes.

Morbid talk aside.. Do you ever wonder what in your life, what is that thing that happened for what reason(s)? We all have things that happen and change our lives permanently in unbelievable ways.

For me, Ninie was (is) one of those things.

What's yours? What changed your life forever..?

MJ's Passing

Yesterday (26th June '09), Michael Jackson dubbed also as the King of Pop by beautiful-gone-eccentric Elizabeth Taylor, passed on.

I was never a huge fan of MJ himself (though I loved the beautiful Elizabeth Taylor esp. in that movie "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof".. err sorry, off-tangent here).. but I liked him enough to have bought a couple of albums back in the 80s and 90s. I remember freaking out everytime I saw the "Thriller" music video (it scared the bejeebers out of me), and I hated that famous red jacket he wore, but after that found "Bad" extremely entertaining. Like most teens back then, I adored that weepy song "You Are Not Alone" until the radio played it soo often your ears would bleed if you heard it one more time. After those turbulent years, to this day I still like his oldies from the Jackson Five days, especially "Ben" (for some reason, dunno why!) and of course you couldn't have grown up in the 80s and not recall "We Are The World" with much fondness.

Suffice to say, I did appreciate some of his music and talent as an entertainer. Who on earth could've created those dance moves other than good ol' MJ?

Frankly, I wasn't one of those people who was so sure that he was a molester as charged. I wasn't too sure that he wasn't either. Whatever the truth is, isn't it for God to judge and not us?

Now he's passed on, and his cycle of life is complete. Whether it is true he died a Muslim or not, only God knows.

Yang dah pergi tu, sudah lah. Let it be.

When I was in primary school, I had a friend who was veryyy much into MJ. You could say she lived and breathed MJ. I saw her last during our uni years, and she was still very much into him. I wonder how she's handling the passing of her idol. I don't particularly have an idol, so I wouldn't know.

Anyways..

His songs however will live on in my fond-nest childhood memories. A bunch of us singing "We Are The World" for some concert in SRK SSP. My friends Audrey, Zarihan and myself clumsily attempting the Moon Walk dance one day when we stayed back at school for co-curriculum activities... laughing our heads off when we came across like chickens doing the hokey-pokey instead of the glamorous Moon Walk. We've all gone separate ways and live separate lives now. A group of black-clad girls hanging out at the neighbourhood park with walkmen hanging out of our ears, singing "You Are Not Alone" at the top of our lungs, with much passion and weepy-ness. I still see some of the girls once in a while with kids or boyfriends in tow at the Sunday neighbourhood pasar malam.

So even though he won't be hearing this.. thanks MJ, for your songs.