To Die

Death is always a subject that one avoids, fear?

When my grandfather died, I was only about 6 years old. Then I used to follow my grandfather and grandmother in a dugout canoe crossing the wide and fast flowing Pahang River, going up stream for about 1 km and on the other side tied our canoe by the river bank and then going up the bank for about half a km to our padi field over there. Why did we have a padi field over there, I still do not knowthe reason until today. My grandfather had other padi fields on this side of the river. We used to go there every year during the padi planting season. I then stayed with my grandparents, a sort of adopted by them.

On one of these trips, my grandfather was suddenly taken ill, swelling at the ankle and feet. And the nearest place where my grandfather was take to was further up the riverbank, in a village about 1 km away to his half-sister’s house. Another reason was that this grand auntie's house was near to one of the village powerful medicine man’s house. There he was left with his half-sister while my grandmother and I went back by the same canoe to cross the Pahang River, going home. downstream. I remember going up again and again to that grand auntie's house to watch the almost nightly sessions of when the medicine men called jinn (genies) to assist in curing my grandfather of his afflicted disease. The ceremony were always done at night for reasons I still do not know until today. The scenario of the medicine man calling on the genies to cure sick people is indescribable, one must watch it to believe. Its funny, its frightening, and its fascinating what he did and what the village the Malays could believe in those days. And the medicine man was always cloaked with his face unseen whenever he performed the ceremony. Anyway to cut the story short, my grandfather never recovered and died; and I saw later in his death certificate that he died of beriberi.

That was the first death of a close relative (and could be the first close ones) I witnessed close. They brought the body back to our house down and across the river, where they had the body bathed, had it wrapped in white cotton cloth. I remember they made the carriage from some palm stems and base of bamboo, the bamboo trees were plentiful then and now near my grandfather’s house, in which they carried the body to the grave site. I remember the grave they dug, the room they made for the body in the grave and I also remember how they all (people in the village, and my grandfather’s children) carried the body to the grave on their shoulders in the contraption they made before then. I remember them placing my grandfathers body inside the grave, made the body face west (kiblah - towards Mecca) and the filling of the grave with the dug-up soils and then saying prayers and lastly leaving the grave yard. How did I feel? Bewildered. But I still felt secured as I still have all my other close relatives with me, especially my grandmother with whom I was close.

Then when I was at the boarding school, my grandmother died. I was never told of her death as I was then out of town and was about to take a very important exam. I never knew how she died, when she died and what she died of. I only found out that she had already died when I went back to the village during my school term holidays. I only was indicated that she was buried near my grandfather’s grave but the exact spot where she was buried was only shown to me by some villagers only lately. I must have been about 16 years old then when my grandmother died.

The next death that occurred in my family was when I just cane back from studies overseas. My father had always been sickly, he was coughing all the time and I was told later that he had fluid in his lungs. Anyway I was then anxious to get him into a hospital when I arrived back home. I got the family’s permission to take him to KL where I managed to get him admitted into the then old KL General Hospital. I thought he was quite comfortable there, got good treatment; they pumped out the fluid from his lungs. But unfortunately he caught pneumonia and died. And I also failed to do my sonly duty, he died alone in the hospital ward. I failed to visit him as regularly as I should. I was only informed one morning by a Policeman about his death and when I arrived at the KLGH I was led to the mortuary where his body have already been taken to. I felt sick, I just cried uncontrollably. I blamed myself then for not being at his death bedside. I remember well, I just saw him from his feet side and his old ‘songkok’ lying by his side. Luckily then I had a very good friend who supported and held on to me in my sadness. And I had a very supporting Departmental head who allowed the whole Department off for the day to accompany my father’s body back to the village. Not only that, he also allowed the Company’s vehicle to be used to ferry the men and the body. I was very grateful and I am still grateful for what he did. They buried my father the same day, quite late. The feeling of sadness is indescribable, and at same graveyard, the same scenario and the same procedures.

A couple of years later my auntie (my fathers sister died). She was already crippled with stroke when I arrived back from overseas. She had no children. And I was not so sad this time as I was not close to her. She was buried next to my father. And the wife of one of my uncles (my father’s elder brother) also died a few years earlier, I cannot remember when but I was told about it. But soon that uncle remarried.

A couple of years later another uncle (my father’s younger brother) got stroke. He recovered but was struck the second time and he soon died. At that time I was serving in Melaka, and I came back to the village for the funeral. He was also buried in the same graveyard as all my relatives have been buried.

In about 1976, my mother died. She was then staying alone in a community of old ladies, not really an old folks home but a place where they stay together in small huts and where they learn some Muslim religious lessons. She chose to go there as she was not really that healthy then. I was told about her death in the morning and by the time I arrived at the place where she died, they have already buried her, this time in a grave site very close to where she died, about 20 km down river from my village. It was a sad moment for me but as she had already been buried there was nothing I could do. I visit her grave site every year, to cut the overgrown weeds and grass and to clean the place up and probably to tell her, "I love you and will always love you".

And a few years later my other uncle (my father’s elder brother as mentioned earlier) who got married died. I was not very close to him, but I came back to the village to attend his burial. And the other uncle (my father’s younger brother) who died earlier left behind a window and she died in about 1988, struck by a fallen mango tree near her house in the night when she was just about to go to sleep. It was a horrible death. I was then just about to go to Sarawak to serve there, and I attended her funeral in the village.

So now all my relatives have died, at least those older than I and the ones close to me. And when I was serving in Sarawak my father-in-law died of heart attack, followed by a few later by my brother-in-law, my wife’s younger brother, who died of asthma. And that was the first time in my life I ever helped to carry the body when putting it in the grave; I did not go down into the grave but just helped out to carry it from the gasket to the mouth of the grave. A very strange feeling came over me, not frightened but just amazed as to the weight of a dead body. I was one of the few who helped and I felt the weight.

And my best friend died when I came back to serve in KL, from Sarawak; he died after undergoing a half successful kidney transplant. Of all the people who died earlier, I had the closest look at my best friend just before they closed his face forever, in fact I kissed him on his forehead. It was a queer feeling, a cold motionless body whom you have known and had fun with for so many years.

It might sound strange why I should talk about death, but after experiencing being involved with relatives and friends dying one after another, my feeling became a bit numb, and when death occurs I just take it as a natural phenomena and have very little feeling about it. Lately many former work colleague and work mates have also passed away and also old classmates from school days also passed away. I get the news, whenever anyone wishes to inform me and where I can make it I attend their funeral; least I can do is to read them the ‘Yassin’ (a Surah of the Quraan) or some other verses from the Quraan, to help them hopefully in their difficult time ‘on the other side’.

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To shout back, e-mail: mylias@tm.net.my