Today marks the fifteenth year of my father’s passing. For some time, after he died, I was gripped with the fear that I will forget. But not a day goes by, without something reminding me of him.
Thumbing through a dictionary and finding a scrap of yellowed paper with his half-written
sajak, buying herbal tea at the
sengseh store and coming across ‘Jeochem’, his daily applied hair tonic, hearing ‘Green, Green Grass of Home’ on Gold FM, the song he used to sing me to sleep.
It’s the little things I stumble upon that evoke his memory.
I remember him calling me and my two brothers by joining up all our names. We became ‘RohaManDin’. But that effectively got us all running to him with a laugh.
I remember when I was ten, being so scared after watching an Indonesian horror film during the day and waking up in a cold sweat at night. I went looking for my father and found him downstairs, sleeping on a mat on the living room floor. He usually had a habit of late night reading and linguistic drilling. He held me and drove my monsters away.
I remember him looking for his eye glasses frantically, sweating and swearing under his breath, late for work or a meeting and us kids pointing to the top of his head where it lay serenely perched.
But, I too recall, that he was not perfect. He was flawed in many ways. He was hardly at home, always busy with work and grassroots activities. Not enough time spent with his family. Oddly enough, I was never adversely affected by that then. He was my hero.
I remember him as my father but I regret not knowing the man. Gathering pieces of him after his death never could quite make up the whole.
Many times in the past years, I wished that he was beside me. To guide me, enlighten me and drive my monsters away.
But I know that he was never really gone.
He lives.
In me.
Abah,
I grieve for you still.
