Friday, October 17, 2014
Heartbreaking Weeks
My uncle died yesterday. The uncle that I mentioned to be terribly sick in the last post. I thought it was tragic. It all happened pretty fast and heartbreaking. He died like 1 month from the day he decided to go to the hospital because he's really not feeling well with what I think is digestion issue. It turned out he had stomach cancer. This writing may not be accurate since I wasn't there to get first hands news. The doctor said it's not operable and it had spread to his lungs. I did ask my mom if they should get another opinion, that was one very heartbreaking conversation with my mom because I think she cried. Hearing your parents cry I think is more heartbreaking that a parent hearing their child cry. Based on the little information I had from that conversation with mom, I spent the next day googling about cancer and stuff. It's very sad because the awareness and education of cancer in Indonesia is not very high and so cases like my uncle is discovered all too late. I also began to wonder if the technology to really help these cases just doesn't exist in Indonesia. In my phone call with mom, she posed a question if human can live without a stomach. Based on watching things like Grey's Anatomy, I thought it's a possibility, but I didn't answer her question based on knowledge found in TV. It is possible by the way and it's one of the treatment for stomach cancer, but that is when the patient is not in the advanced stage. Since my uncle's lungs had been affected, I assumed he's in the final stage and there's no cure for that and from what I gathered the treatment is palliative chemotherapy. I have never seen anyone I know going through chemo but from stories it seems pretty rough and it does make me wonder why one would go through that if it's not going to make any difference.
So my uncle got discharged last Saturday and he died yesterday. As I am writing this, I am trying not to cry. It's all very tragic. My mother met him the evening before his death and she also spent the weekend in his house. When the family got the verdict from the doctor, they feel at least it's not as sudden as my other uncle who just went into a coma after he fell. In a way, everyone had time to prepare, but as the past few weeks have been, it's all just very very heartbreaking. I tried to think of what memories I have with this uncle. When I was young and he and my aunt didn't have any children yet, I used to stay over at their house during holiday. I was like their practice child. I remember going to a movie with him, the two of us, but I couldn't remember what movie it was and if we watched the whole thing. Then I remember walking back to his house, we're passing through a cemetery and he told me not to run on top of the graves. That's a weird memory to have because I am not sure if there's even a cemetery around his house, but I think it really happened because how can a child conjure such a weird distinct memory. Perhaps the last interaction I had with him was last year (I think) during Chinese new year where I sat in his new house while everyone else were in the old house. It was just me and him watching his cable, I couldn't remember what conversation we had but I remember him telling me that my dad would love cable tv.
Really trying not to cry. I feel like I am always distanced and removed from the happenings at home because simply there's the literal distance. It does make me feel bad that it's like I don't feel more and also because I'm not there to help out. In my 14 years in Singapore, I have had grandpa died, 3 aunts from my dad's side, and now 2 uncles from my mom's side. Maybe I missed out on some people too. I didn't go home in any of those moments. My only adult experience in having to face death and funeral straight on is of Astley's. There are moments where I wonder if all these years of being alone here have caused me to be more and more heartless. It's selfish to feel this way, it's just being here I am spared from seeing my mom and other aunts and uncles in mourning. Again, seeing your elders cry is really really hard even though I know they are really really strong people mentally.
:) eKa @ 9:59:00 PM •
Saturday, October 04, 2014
Hazed & Confused
Hi guys, how are you doing? I haven't been doing well these past weeks. More like a mental issue than physical though physically my body is also rather weird these days. The title comes from a Ben & Jerry's ice cream. I just ate 1 pint of Hazed and Confused Core. Is it wise to do so? I would say no. Ingesting that much sugar in one go doesn't seem to be a good idea. I'm having a bit of a headache now. Anyways I rationalize it by telling myself that I have been thinking about it for some time and I have been in a sad stressed mood for some time now. Along with that bad decision, today I also bought so many sugary things, this is despite of me having some worry that I may have started to have diabetes :'( I don't want to face this if it's true and so I have been avoiding taking a medical check :( All in all, despite of me feeling this bad, it can't be compared to one of my uncles who's really sick right now. It's really worrying that I went to the temple after class today to say a prayer for him. I really really hope the worst will not happen to him, that the doctor will have a good plan and can execute it, and he'll get through this.
On other mundane news. Because of class, I haven't been going to the cinema, but some weeks ago, I managed to drag myself to watch
The Maze Runner. I like the maze mystery theme, but didn't like the ending when the survivors just simply exited out into the modern world. Watching it, I was thinking of how some of the boys whom we watched when they're just little boys, like Thomas Brodie-Sangster and Will Poulter, have grown to be young men and I really felt old because of this. Similarly, I always feel that way whenever I see Freddie Highmore.
On books, I finished reading
Le Petit Nicolas by René Goscinny and Jean-Jacques Sempé. It's actually a really thin book and yet I took quite a long time. I really enjoyed it. Was looking for another french book, but I couldn't find anything that I fancy when I went to Kinokuniya. I wanted to buy something by a french writer rather than translated works, but I don't know which writer is a good one and I realized something about me, I don't fancy straightforward love story or perhaps any love story for that matter. I think it has something to do with the fact that I am perpetually single :( So anyway, right now I am reading
The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt. Didn't know what book I should read next, so I just bought this simply because it won the Pulitzer Prize this year. I'm kinda confident that I can finish this before the year ends and so that would make me complete 8 books this year. I also bought
Moby-Dick by Herman Melville to fulfill that goal of reading more classic works, but I don't know if I can finish it by this year. So far I found that
The Goldfinch to be not that fluid for me, so I am moving quite slowly. I haven't progressed much so I don't know if I like it.
Watching the Asian Games closing ceremony now because I want to watch the Indonesian part of the performance, since Jakarta will be hosting the next Asian Games. I don't know how the committee came up with that decision, since Jakarta is chaotic. We have an ambitious governor but he has like only 3 years left and while I have seen many comments of people supporting his tough stance, there are racists extremists who's ever so ready to make sure he's having a hard time, for example by staging a violent protest. I think there are many Indonesians who don't understand what being racist means. Even if they do, I think many think it's alright to discriminate and any attempt to teach it's not so will be deemed as imported value that does not necessarily fit with what our country is all about :( The state of Indonesian politics right now is really really bad. While people in Hong Kong are staging protest because they have to accept what I call as a filtered (or perhaps censored) democracy, in Indonesia recently our rights to vote officials like for the governor post have been snatched away from us. The parliament will choose for us, so we can kiss goodbye to all the good people who perhaps want to run but didn't want to go through the corrupt parties and all the drama. When the law was passed, all I could think of was how "jahat" (= bad, mean) the people in the parliament are. They shamelessly do all this for the sake of their own power and position and for spite, not for the good of the people. Our current sitting president is also such an ass that I felt quite sad that I voted for him for his second term. He's saying that he's sad about this law but people from his party in the parliament walked out during the vote and the good people lost the vote. Well they may have lost anyway even with the people who walked out voting against the bill, but if they had given their support earlier and be more outspoken about how bad the bill was, perhaps we wouldn't have been in this grave situation. I'm still holding for hope that the righteous people will be successful in repelling this law.
Alright I don't have anything else to share. Hope your life is great. Ciao!
:) eKa @ 6:53:00 PM •