Perhaps I should’ve written this when I turned 25. Or on the 24th of July. Or probably on the 10th. Probably I should’ve written this in mid-February when I was lying on bed in a hospital in a city I’d never quite known. As I laid that first night, waiting for a call that never came, I wondered how on earth I ended up where I was. I thought of where I was then, and where I was a year ago. Exactly a year ago, I would never have thought I’d end up in a hospital, in a third class ward shared with seven others. But a lot of things had happened between last February and this.
A year ago, I am quite certain I’d been working late — February had always been a busy period for any audit firm. A year ago, I’d been getting news of my grandpa’s deteriorating health. A year ago, I’d been planning my high school best friend’s trip to Singapore, the places we’d go to and the things we’d do. A year ago, I’d most likely been thinking of the future, some five, ten, twenty years from now — the then now. A year ago, I’d never known there’s a missionary campus in Manado. Guess where I ended up exactly a year later.
But a lot of things had happened between last February and this. My friends got married, and one planned and cancelled it. I went to the newly opened Universal Studio’s for the first time, and took my first roller coaster ride in years, holding my best friend’s hand in mine. My grandfather passed away, and, after years thinking I was such a coward to avoid watching any horror movie, I ended up sleeping less than a couple of meters away from my grandpa’s dead body in the funeral house. I went up to Monas for the first time in my adult life. I also managed to drag my best friend to see museums and old parts of Jakarta during my 3-week holiday. Then to see her gray face with make-ups I knew she would never want to be found dead wearing, and that skirt too. To see her coffin glued. Then lowered to the ground. And finally buried. After years thinking that I would never cry in a funeral, I had never found myself cried as hard as I did in that mid of July.
A lot of things had happened between last February and this. I left my job, and my second home. I left my position, association, friends, roads, and views. I left the city. I thought, I would try that less travelled road at least once. And I ended up in a hospital, where most people usually ended up, I guess. Life is funny. What had happened and where I would chart my course of life, I had never seen or even thought of them. I’d never thought I would mend an almost forgotten friendship. I’d never thought I would be buried in the water by a pastor before I was 30, or even registered myself in any denomination. I’d never thought I’d give up power. I’d never thought I’d go for the broke. I’d never thought I would trade an urban life for getting lost in a jungle for 16 hours and ended up getting cramps in my whole body that was so painful I cried out for a drug that would just knock me out. I’d never thought I’d ever be admitted to a hospital except for childbirth. Well, I also would never thought someone I knew so well could die within just three days at such a young age.
How did I end up in a hospital that February? But a lot of things had happened between last year and that February, things I had never thought of. Was it so weird then that I found myself in a hospital ward that night?
Even then, a lot of things had happened between that February and today, things I frankly had never thought either. I had tried to biblically explain about ghosts to a family member of one of the patients in my ward. I had suffered more painful cramps. I had quit that campus in that little town. I had been back to the big cities. I had sent emails to an address I knew had been master-less. I had listened to stories and saw things I thought had been buried when I was in fourth grade. I had visited a grave that I know was soul-less and talked to the wind and flowers and stones. Who would’ve thought that I’d lay flowers in commemoration of a one-year death anniversary? Who would’ve thought I’d see a birthday reminder of a dead person on my facebook? It is not fair, I thought, to say a happy birthday to people when I could not to this one person.
To be frank, I had not thought I’d even reach 24 too. When one has seen how Death could so swiftly take lives away, I think one cannot help to think that Death too could visit one’s bed any day now. But I reached 24, and each day after. And I reached 25 too. In a way, I am satisfied. 25 is good enough, and perhaps more than what I thought I could be. I had once thought I’d never reach this far. Then again, I have an unfulfilled promise I have to keep.
In that hot mid-February as I laid on a bed in hospital in a strange town on my own, and thought of how the things that had happened in the past one year had been unthinkable, and how in just less than a year I had suffered both the worst emotional and physical pains I had ever experienced thus far in my life, it came to me that a lot of things could also happen in the next one year, things that I had never thought of. So don’t ask me where I would be in a year’s time, or next month, or next week. Don’t ask me about the future, five, ten, twenty years from now. Even tomorrow, I frankly do not know. I bet, in a year’s time, I would be in a place I’d never thought of before. A lot of things had happened before, and I guess a lot of things will happen too.
And you know, I’ve written this in memory of that one person who would never be a quarter of a century old. But I heard, she’s kicking up a storm in the East Coast.
-me-
Jakarta, 3 September 2011, 1:15AM.
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