I have not been able to write about my father’s death since he passed away, eight years and one month ago. This is not particularly noteworthy except for the fact that I love to write. I love to read. I love to put my thoughts down on pen or paper or Microsoft Word document. But on a childish level, it has felt like if I write about my father’s death, then it will become real. More real than the fact that he has, obviously, not been around for the last eight years and one month. More real than the fact that life has moved on without him, in the annoying way that life does. More real than a gravestone, or a burial, or a persistent absence. I don’t know why I’m suddenly ready now. Eight years and one month later - here is an epitaph, for my father.
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My father had a gift of making each of his five children feel like they were his favourite. I, his eldest daughter, so like him in temperance, was his favourite. Faten, his headstrong secondborn whom he had always understood more than her mother ever could, was his favourite. Nazurah, who he treated so tenderly and was with him in KL when the rest of the family wasn’t, was his favourite. Zahirah, his beloved, easy, youngest daughter, was his favourite. And of course Ali, the rose amongst the thorns, the youngest child, the only son, the finale to our family, was his favourite. What a wonderful legacy to leave - for all your children to be convinced that they were one that their father loved best.
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I was in Cambridge doing my MBA when I got the initial messages from my husband in KL - yellow flags, but not yet red at the time. “Abah seems different. Is he angry at me?” “Abah seems silent. Is he stressed about something?” And then one night the biggest red flag. “Abah seems to have had a stroke at dinner. He’s in the hospital. I’ll keep you updated.” The panic, the many cigarettes smoked in the backyard of my student housing, in the dead of the cold night air. The family video call with the doctor, all siblings dialled in from all corners of the world, to hear the diagnosis: stage 4 small cell lung cancer, that had spread to the brain; several months left. And what was unspoken but was signalled across to all my father’s children like an SOS signal that only the five of you could detect - come back to him, now.
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Epitaphs are hard, because memories are not chronological. Where do you start? With your earliest memory? Or your last?
Your earliest memories are hearing Les Miserables playing over and over again on your father’s sophisticated and expensive record player and sound system set up. With Faten, surprising your parents with home made gifts after work one day; jumping out from behind the plant in the living room to gift them what was probably just empty boxes in recycled wrapping paper. With Faten, diligently scraping at spilled candle wax on the floors of your house, pretending that you were both engineers “like Abah”, because though you both have no idea what it is engineers do, obviously it is scraping candle wax. Picking out a tie in the morning for Abah to wear to work, from the seemingly massive tie collection in his drawer. Horseback rides on Abah, and he would take turns to have his (at that time) three daughters ride on his back. The cheerful yellow wooden “tree house” in the garden that Abah designed and constructed (like a true engineer) for his daughters, complete with real roof! And fabric curtains! The special Friday lunches - or were they breakfasts? - that he used to have with you and Faten, when Brunei followed the Islamic way of having Fridays off for school and the civil service. Bedtime lullabies each night before bed, where Abah would play Tears in Heaven or If or Hotel California on his guitar before you went to sleep; silhouette of a shirtless man, holding his big acoustic guitar (the 12 string guitar instead of the 6 string if you were lucky that night!) in a doorway, singing to his kids before he’d spend his night at his desktop computer in the family room like the night owl he was. And if you woke up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom or get a glass of water, you’d know that he’d be there at his computer. It was reassuring, and made the nights seem less scary to you as a child.
As you got older, other memories too - Abah promising to send you to an Ivy League university, no matter what. And you finally graduating, triumphantly, even after so many visits to the university’s financial collections office requesting payment plans, because although your father’s construction projects had been delayed, your parents had miraculously, incredibly, with so much sacrifice, managed to fund your US dollar higher education.
Your father’s pride when you got your first job. The first time you took him out for lunch and coffee (Americano with milk on the side, like Zahirah now drinks) at Chinoz KLCC, and paid with your own pay check. His friendliness (and maybe to an extent, some relief) when he met your future husband for the first time. And when he met your future husband’s parents, and got along with them so well.
And towards the end: the sickness that took over, and that strips its victims of any dignity. The puffiness from the steroid medicine, and faltering speech caused by the brain tumour. The British Blue shorthair kitten that he called several pet stores across KL to find (with such determination that you’ll never know was because of his cancer or in spite of it), and that he insisted you had to adopt, much to the bemusement of your non-pet-person husband. The final days were he was bedridden, where there was no more speech, when doleful eye contact was the only means of communicating. The late nights in Brunei when you and your sisters and brother would take each turns staying up at night with your father so he wouldn’t be alone, even in the dead of night. Some nights it was just you, and him, and the moon. And you’d hold his hand - which felt so familiar and yet always strange for a family that wasn’t big on physical affection - and say in your heart all the things that you wanted to tell him but couldn’t, because it’s always been easier to write things than to say it; knowing that he’d hear what was in your heart. Say things like I love you, Abah (so enviously easy for some people to articulate, but so difficult for our family because we just don’t talk like that). Say things like I’m sorry (because there’s always such a long list of things to be sorry about, isn’t there? Sorry for being selfish, sorry for not being more grateful, sorry for not being a better daughter). Say things like don’t worry about us - we’ll be ok - we will take care of each other when you are gone. A lifetime of thoughts, fervently communicated telepathically from your clasped hand to his.
And then finally, the real end: the ambulance that came to take your father to the hospital, when his breathing had slowed to a worrying level. The hospital bed, where your mother and siblings stood around your father, each touching a different part of his body, just to feel connected to him for a final time. When everyone said goodbye, and that it was ok to let go. And though Abah’s eyes were closed, and he was already unconscious by then, it was as though he had heard what everyone said, because a single tear trickled out of his eye, and suddenly there was no more breath in his body. And you realised that you had just seen a life depart. That your father may have been there for your birth, but you were there for his departure. The nights after, where you sobbed into your husband’s shoulder in the darkness of your bed.
And the after after - for there are many memories after, eight years and one month’s worth of memories after. How your skinny little British Blue kitten has grown into a contented fat cat, but how he’ll always really be your father’s cat first of all. The bittersweetness of family milestones, because every joyous event and family drama (the birth of your two sons, your younger sister’s wedding; the fights between your mother and third sister) will always be irrevocably marked by your father’s absence, by the wonder of how it would have been different if he was still around. Life goes on, and expands beyond the grief.
But you still send out the same messages, like a radio message into the universe. Fervently communicating telepathically, the things in your heart you wanted to tell him out loud but couldn’t, because it’s always been easier to write things than to say it; but now there’s no choice than to say it telepathically because he’s not around to hear it. Things like I love you, Abah (so enviously easy for other families to say, but that you are now teaching your sons to say like it’s no big deal at all). Things like I’m sorry, I’m sorry (because there’s always still a long list of things to be sorry about - sorry for being selfish, sorry for not being more grateful, sorry for not being a better daughter). Things like don’t worry about us - we are taking care of each other now that you are gone, but we will always, always miss you.
A lifetime of thoughts, still communicated from your heart to his, that you will send out until one day you, too, are gone.
