Redha

I read my brother's blog regarding his subsequent redha on the death of our beloved sister due to a fatal accident in Pahang in September 1979. He wrote "My other brothers and sisters and even parents were fast to redza and after a short period of mourning ,life went on as usual for them ,alhamdullillah. I had fits of depression and lounging for years to come." How wrong he was - his depression was the guilt but mine was the loss.

I was depressed for years as I was closer to her than to any other persons in my young life. We shared alot together. She was a big part of my life - guiding me and always being there for me. For the few months after her passing I was virtually under the care of friends in college who ensured that I go through my daily life safely as I just wanted to die along with her. I would crossed roads without looking at the traffic as I just don't care. I didn't care about my personal hygiene for days as I don't care if I rot as I didn't have the will to live. I felt empty and hollow inside. Everything was a blur as I numbed my feelings and emotions. My brain was shut down and I think I was able to pass my 4th year in university due to compassion from lecturers. I was just going through the motion. Every free moments I had I would be praying for her - I would be imagining her crying at the gate of our house, calling out our names, wanting to be back with us and the feeling of helplessness was heart-wrenching and excruciating.

I was angry at my brother and sister for delaying our departure to the hospital where she was in coma. I could still remember the sadness and the tense mood in the car and my complete breakdown upon seeing her body laid on the stretcher. She died alone - on a stretcher at the cold corridoor of an alien hospital. The subsequent events - being in the van with her from Pahang to our hometown in KB, holding her, praying and hoping that she would move or open her eyes and that this was just a bad dream, and then the burial, was and still is the worst time of my life. The last night I remembered her alive was on her wedding night - all of us were exhausted and sleeping. She woke me up in the middle of the night and asked to borrow my "kain sembahyang" as hers was too small and kept slipping. Too tired and too sleepy I did not get up to give her mine but sleepily told her to tie up her sarong in a double knot and she quietly went out of my room. Three days later I was at the public phone in UTM trying to call her, when my brother came to the university to inform me about her accident. I didn't believe him and prayed intensely to hear her voice over the phone - she's going to pick up that phone and I felt at that moment I need to tell her how much I loved her, to say sorry for all the selfish things I did to her while she had unconditionally loved and cared for me. I carried the anger, the guilt but most of all the deep sadness and longing for years and years.

I still dream of her.  Whenever I have the opporturnity I would tell my husband and children about her - how pretty she was, how everybody loved her, how all of us would call out to her at the dinner table to tell her our day, how she helped me to find my books or things lost, how she would patiently coax me whenever I sulked, how she ate her rambutan and asam boi, and how compassionate she was. To me at that time she was my anchor, she was perfect and like an angel.

I guess all of us siblings and my mum suffered in our separate ways - we never talked about how deep the loss was to us. On the exterior "life went on as usual". But we never play the game of cards "Ginrami" as a family again - the laughter, the secret code, the excitement can never be replicated and be echoed ever again. I could never see anyone who looks like her without an ache and longing. Redha? - of course we redha it is God's will. I never question that. But her death changed me forever. AlFatihah.