death

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Two weddings and one funeral

I don’t remember having a normal night when I don’t have any plans for the next day. My life has been in a fast lane this past one month.
I don’t remember waking up late because I have been putting all my energy for the most important day in my life: wedding days. In my case I have two wedding days. So please double all the rempongness and the energy consuming.
7 June was the best day ever in my life and then followed by the hangover and the prep for the next wedding (exactly one week after that)
Then, 14 june was a blast for both of our family. They called it as the happiest wedding of their lives. Well, Bandi and I were under influence of course and we went along with it. It was a typical Chinese wedding with so many people we didn’t know, but well, as long as both parents were happy, we were happy too. The next day after the second wedding, I woke up at 5 am in the morning to watch Azzuri’s first match against England and we won!!! I thought to my self, could my life be anymore awesome?! Yes it could!!! Because we were flying to Maldives in 2 hours!!! Woot woot!!!
Bandi had prepared our honeymoon: one week in Maldives.
Our route was: Palembang – Batam -Singapore – KL – Male – Maldives (Medufushi Resort)
It was still a long way and we were so tired, but we sucked it up because we knew we would have one week to just lazying around in our private water villa. I already packed sunglasses, sunblock, novels, and new bikinis. I was sooooo thrilled that we could finally spend some alone time together and oh how I planned to f**k hard. Lol. (FYI I was on my period on my wedding day 7th june and all along we always spent the night with either friends or family, so yeah we never had sexy time)
When we landed in Batam at 10am in the morning, Bandi called home because he had a bad feeling. And he was right…. His grandpa just passed away. 12 hours after the wedding.
I’m a bad person because the first thing crosses my mind was… I was upset because obviously the honeymoon was cancelled.
Bandi told the cab driver to return back to Batam airport after we dropped Angel (my bridesmaid) to the ferry harbor. We bought a ticket back to Palembang later that night.
He told me that he was sorry that we had to cancel our honeymoon and that he knew I was physically super tired and obviously needed rest and we both know how tiring Chinese funeral could be, but he said we had to do the right thing. Life is only once, and if we do it right, once is enough.
It took me only a couple of minutes to remember why I married him in the first place. I married him because he’s kind and wonderful and I realize I just wanna be with him, whether it’s in maldives or in a funeral home. I married him because he puts people he loves first before himself, and I love him for that.
So we flew back to Palembang that night and we went straight to the hospital. He broke down and cried. I just held his hand and I thought to myself, from this day forward I would dedicate my life just to make sure he’s fine and he would never face anything alone anymore.
Suddenly losing Maldives didn’t feel so hurtful anymore. Because I would never lose this amazing man beside me, who would sacrifice anything and do anything for his family.
Maldives will always be there. But we can never turn back the time to the day we say our last goodbye to the people we love. To the day he say goodbye to his grandpa, a man who technically a father figure in his life since Bandi’s dad passed away.
Life is short and it is funny and ironic sometimes.
We just danced happily on our wedding, and we received so many flower arrangements saying “congratulation on your wedding” and now just 24 hours later we cried and received another flower arrangements saying “deep condolences”
Ain’t life funny?
We could laugh sarcastically, but why should we be bitter, when we could just laugh along with it?
Yesterday afternoon his grandpa was finally buried and he said his last goodbye. It was very emotional for him and all I could do just be there… Just to hold his hand.
Tonight we will fly back to Singapore to take Bandi’s brother to hospital because he’s sick.
I hope everything will be fine eventually. So we made a vow to always be with each other for good times and bad times, and the bad times stroke first, so what?
As long as we’re together, nothing seem so bad anyway. :)

Death ends life, not relationship – Mitch Albom

Kisses,
May, Palembang 19 June 2014.

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I don’t know anything about death.

All my friends and my blog reader know that I’m not close with my family, mentally and emotionally.

I love my Mom and Dad, but thank god they’re still alive until now.

I have this tendency not to so attached with anyone, including my parents and my siblings. I have never talked about my family in this blog, haven’t I? I wasn’t close to my grandparents either, so when they died, there was no apocalypse-like in my life.

I lost a good friend once, which I made a post about her here.

I liked her very much and it was so sad that she went away so fast.

I also lost my doggies couple of times, and I should tell you, it was the hardest time for me of accepting death.

I learn so many things about death from Mitch Albom’s books, such as Tuesday with Morries, with the famous quotation:

Death ends life, not relationship. — Morrie Schwartz

And also “Five people you meet in heaven” and “Have a little Faith”.

Albom is the only writer that perceive death as a celebration, not a tragedy. And I love him for that.

As beautiful as words could be arranged by Albom, death is surely a tragedy for some people. I want to talk about one particular tragedy that happened in my closest person’s life, Bandi last week. He just lost his Grams, whom he’s very close with, who technically raised him to be what he is now today. His Grams was perfectly healthy and was taken away all of sudden, in the morning, during her usual chores. Nobody knew she would go away so fast.

I was the one who deliver this message to him, which I got from his uncle. He left his office at once and met me at home, to buy tickets to his hometown. He took his two little sisters with him and off we go to his hometown, the longest journey ever because that restless feeling.

I didn’t know losing someone important can really hit your life to the rocks bottom. I really didn’t know, so I did’t know what to do or what to say to him. How broken hearted I was to see him broke down like that, and there was nothing I could do. I was just being there, without doing anything.

Until now, I never talk to him about death because I don’t know anything about it. The same thing when my bestfriend lost her father. I didn’t know what to say or what to do. But that didn’t mean I don’t care at all. I just didn’t know what it was all about. Who am I talking about death? I don’t know anything about it. That’s the only thing that scared me to death, no pun intended.

So, when is this tragedy turns to be this celebration like what Albom has written?

When is this all finally explain the “everything happens for reason?”

;

May.

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Death ends life, not relationship.

In one week I received 3 news about dying people with serious disease. 2 ends with death. The first one is a cute 7 years old boy named Luke, which is my friend’s son. He finally gave up on his bone cancer after months fighting.

The other one is one of the most wonderful friends I have, Monica Yuan Marchelia. I knew her in 2004 back in our college days and the last time I met her was 2 years ago in a bus back then in Jakarta. The first thing she asked was “how are you and Bandi?”. Knowing that our LDR was okay she answered with relieve, “You guys are very cute. I can’t wait to go to your wedding.”

Now I’m shivering knowing she won’t attend it.

She suffered from 3 kinds of deadly virus and her immunity system keeps decreasing. And I wasn’t even there to say goodbye to her. So, this is my goodbye post for her.

I gotta say, she had touched my life. Our closeness started when I needed support for organizing a charity organization back then in college years. I asked her whether she would like to accept committing to charity works for a year with me. She undoubtly said yes afterwards. We’ve worked together for a year. In a year, it was always me who whine all the time and it was always her to remind me to keep fighting and never give up. I have met the best working partner.
She is a good person. she never intends to hurt anyone. She laughs in a very funny way that when we heard her laugh, we’d automatically laugh along.

We used to work on our paperworks regarding the organization together in her place, spending almost all day. One hour to do the paperworks, six hours talking about love and wimpy heart stuffs and ended laughing about it. She’s a very fun person to be with. That’s probably everyone thinks first thing about her.

After we graduated, we both had Long Distance Relationships and likely to share by messenger. She always reminded me to never ever let go the man I had then. Hope she’s happy to know that I am still with that man and plan to do what she said. :)

She is a good person. No doubt.

Then there goes the question: why bad things happen to good people?
Sometimes the most unpredictable things happen and we’re just not ready for it. I don’t mean to blame universe, I know and sanely believe that everything does happen for reason. but when will be GET the reason? Coz now I can’t seem to find one good reason for this to happen.

If you’re expecting for a wise answer at the end of this post then I gotta say, that you’ll be disappointed.
I don’t know why. I’m still figuring out a lot of things in life, especially this one, about death.
When will we die? What happens after we die? And WHY we die?

In my religion, death is not the end of life. It’s just a cycle, coz we will be reincarnated and be born again… to be a different person.

Why do I need to be born as other person, with other personality? I love myself now. I love my personality, I love my skintone. Can I have these all again? Especially, I want to fall in love with the one I have with me now in the next life.
Why die and change into something different when what we have now is JUST perfect?

What will death teach us?

One sentence from the book “Tuesdays with Morrie” releases me from  worries:

Death ends life, not relationship.

Yes, people might die, we can’t do anything about it. The only thing we can do is keep having relationship with them. Talk to them on their graves, pray for them, and keeping their memories alive. Because however the feeling that we have to this particular person won’t change just because s/he’s not breathing anymore. Death only ends her life, not her relationship with her loved ones.

So until the time comes that I finally understand the reason why these all happened, I just gotta keep my relationship with all my lovely friends, dead or alive.

How you doin up there, Yuan? See ya when I see ya!

Love,

May