bapak

just read my sister's status of facebook: kangen nasi goreng seafood dan pindang-sambal-kemiri bapak (miss father's seafood fried rice and boiled fish with hazelnut sauce). and a surge of emotion flows through my whole body.

 

my parents have four children, making me the eldest. our father, we call him bapak, was so many things to us the children. well, our mother is an amazing mother, having done things no other mothers nor wives would do in life, stretching out everything to give all things possible to our family, giving her life and love to keep our family from falling apart, praying day and night to keep my troubled brothers and sister from totally messing up their lives. she really made it, an amazing woman indeed.

 

but bapak is our national hero. oh okay, he is my national hero. i mean, he was the one for us. the one and only one who was willing to see our dreams and saw the chances that those dreams might come true. the one who would treat our dreams as things that were just not yet became reality but soon would do. he was the one telling me to go with my math major simply because he knew i loved it so much. he was the one telling me to go for this posh boarding school simply because he knew i wanted to give it a try. he was the one allowing me to apply to this posh junior high school even when he knew he might never be able to afford it and i might very well embarassed myself for being so different with my schoolmates just because he knew i wanted it. he knew i wanted things beyond my reach. he knew i wanted to give everything a try. he knew i wasnt afraid of failure. he just knew. and he always let me do it, assissting me along the way, letting me know that if i said i couldnt make it any further then i didnt have to. because he knew, he always knew, as much as i wanted to do everything my way i never had any plans to embarass him, or to cause him trouble, or to slave myself to death just to get to my obesessions.

 

bapak used to cook a lot. his favourite were this seafood fried rice and that boiled fish with hazelnut sauce. tell you what, they were fabulous. nobody can make it the way he did. seafood was quite pricey for us so he only made it on very special occasions: when he felt like it. yes, thats the way he was. special occassions were the times when he felt like it. nothing more, nothing less. money was just something he could work for later. special occassions would not be there forever. as weird as it sounds, i am happy that it was the way he was. things got harder when his business went down and much harder later. but this man of ours never run out of reasons to celebrate a day.

 

boiled fish used to be very cheap, and easy to cook. more and more often later, that would be our menu. we the children are used to grumble. WHAT, MORE BOILED FISH TODAY? and he would prepare something else the next day. i dont know if it hurt him. maybe not. not so many things hurt his feeling, i think, as long as we continued being the obedient and nice kids we used to be. well, my brothers and sister got into trouble every now and then, but nothing big. just things kids do. oh okay, it got worsen when they got into teenage phase, but still we were relatively nice kids. you know, doing quite well in school, managed to graduate no matter what, didnt terrorize our parents just to get things we want because other kids did, didnt drink, didnt smoke, didnt get into drugs, didnt get pregnant before getting married, went to church every sunday. oh okay, the list goes on and on.

 

now, what did i try to say again? oh, that boiled fish with hazelnut sauce. i miss it too. i wonder if he misses having it too with us, his wife and children. that old good time. but they say we are now in different worlds, so he may not have this feeling of missing something. 

 

it has been three years now. i wonder if he knows that we did manage to get through without him. i wonder if he knows how we cling into each other more to ease the pain of losing him, how we care about each other more because there is no more of a man who will fix everything, how we pray for each other more because there is no such a hero who will pray for everything anymore. i wonder if he knows that after three years i still wish he was here, comfort me in my hopelessness, my broken-heartedness. we did it without you for three hard years, bapak dear, but we would have preferred having you around.