100 days

and life goes on and on

TW // Death, Grief

Hi Ayah,

It has now been 100 days since you’ve been gone. It sounds like a lot when that night I remember being curled up in the hospital corridor to ring my best friend and I sat there quietly, without speaking, without ever uttering the words because doing so would make it real. In a room of grief, I often find it hard to imagine a path leading out of it. Looking back, I did not know what I would be doing 100 days after you were gone. I don’t think I ever thought about it.

Let’s catch up, shall we?

4 hours after you left, I sat on your empty bed as people who I used to think of as family stood in front of me and told me my words didn’t matter. That all that I am was only because of them. That it didn’t matter that I was your daughter because I was younger than them. I was barely 19 that night but I felt even smaller, staring up at these people who were at least 20 years older than me, barking at my face.

You have never liked confrontation but here we are, in a house where you nurtured me and raised me, with your body laying cold in the living room where we spent all our mornings reciting the Quran. I thought I saw a glimpse of you at the corner of the room. At the end of the day, that was all that mattered. I did not cry that night. I looked into their eyes, stood my ground, and that would be the last they will ever see of me. I hope you know I am not ashamed of that night, nor was I ever scared.

10 days after you left, I went to your grave with my best friend alone. We took the train up to Bandung, and I had a vivid memory of doing this with you. I picked out flowers and relished my first opportunity to sit next to you alone. No one was around to tell me that I could not cry — but I didn’t anyway. I didn’t have tears, just questions.

27 days after you left, I took the plane back up to Durham. On the plane, Skye asked me if I had bought my water-resistant shoes and I said no. Then I remembered how I had mentioned it once and you had brought it up multiple times after, asking if I had gotten it yet. I cried for 3 hours on that flight. Am I closer to you in the sky than I was next to your grave?

30 days after you left, I got out of bed and pulled myself together for an interview despite feeling absolutely beat up by grief. I got an email a couple of hours later telling me I got the job. I sent the screenshot to the family group chat and realised you would never see it or tell me what you think of it. I went back to bed and dreamt of a message.

42 days after you left, I got nominated for a silly little university award for best individual offstage in theatre. I thought about how I never had to defend my interest or hobby to you, despite them not being CV oriented or aligned with the possible career path I wanted to take. But you have always been the little push on my back, and I wish you were here to see me recognised.

43 days after you left, I went to Oxford for my job training. The last time I went to Oxford almost 6 years ago, you were on the coach with me and told me to always be kind and helpful wherever I can. The secret tricks to life were what you called them. I do believe that it brought me here again. It was in this city that you let me go to live far from home for the first time, yet for 3 whole days of my training, I felt your presence looming over me.

48 days after you left, I finished my first-year exams. You were always the most interested in the texts I do for university. I pack them all away and know you would never ask anymore. Summer finally came around and a heatwave was on the edge of Durham, I lay under the sun on the grass and had a conversation with you.

72 days after you left, I took the train down to Oxford to live and work there for 10 weeks. I’m sorry for delaying the time until I get to see you again, but if you were here you would have said to put this first. You were meant to come see Durham this time of the year and I would have shown you the Cathedral and the Castle and took you to my favourite Pizza shop, but instead, I was on my way to another city where I don’t know anyone or anything. I packed my grief in a suitcase and never looked back.

87 days after you left, I went to see The Hobbit alone in the theatre on my day off. It was a lovely day in Oxford, the city centre bustling with tourists. I brushed the trickling loneliness away and thought of how the reason I became such a Tolkien nerd was because you were watching The Desolation of Smaug one day in the living room of a house that I can no longer remember. You bought me the set of books a week later and I devoured them in days. In the theatre, a little girl was sitting with her father next to me and he explained to her what a matinee was and why Bilbo did not want to leave the house and I felt unreasonable sadness bubbling up in me. I smiled at them at the end of the show.

100 days after you left, I took the day off work and did laundry. 100 days after you left, Hank Green posted a youtube video to say at his cancer responded well to chemotherapy and that he is on the right track to remission. I felt happy for him, but at the same time wonder why nothing helped you. I had stopped asking questions about what could have been and would have been. I am angry, but I am not godless. I know things happen for a reason. But that day I took a walk with Skye on a cloudy day and whispered, so softly I was scared I could hear it. Why did you have to go?

Sanna Wani wrote in My Grief, The Sun:

I am trying to use my whole heart but I am very bad at that too. I wrote this after all. Long-winded, long, winding way of using almost blinding sunsets and grown golden barley just to say, I think of you so often. We miss you so much.

107 days after you left, I got an email from the my high school’s alumni department asking if I could speak at their Admissions’ team presentation in Jakarta in September as an alumni. We had gone to one of these sessions together and I thought of how you made me do all the admission process one by one while still guiding me through it. We booked our trip to Singapore to visit the school for the first time together and I know everything I was able to achieve in there, you were in it. I wish I could tell you. I wish you could see it. I taught in a classroom for the first time in my life and we learned how to express wishes and regrets and I realised I’ve only spoken in them for 100 days.

Despite all, life goes on and continues moving. I can speak of you freely now. I hold grief’s hand in mine and we do life together. I wonder what you have done in 100 days. I hope I can know, one day. I look up at the sky every day and hope you are watching over me.

P.S. Thank you everyone who have been reading! As I mentioned, currently working a very busy full time job and therefore have not actually had the time to sit down and process everything in my head. Looking forward for university to start ♡ Hope you’re all doing well. Please as always, say hello!