True enough, i still couldn't stomach the fact that my grandmother has passed away.
Nenek,
how are you doing in the other life?
I hope the angels are treating you good.
I hope you're free from the clutches of hell.
Nenek,
you look beautiful when you left us.
When the ustazah put on the eyeliner on you,
I couldn't describe the Nur on your face.
Nenek,
Alhamdulillah, you allowed us to cleanse you for the last time.
Alhamdulillah, Allah has made it easy for us to cleanse you.
Alhamdulillah, Allah has made your limbs soft so that we, your grandchildren, bibik, and your youngest daughter, could easily cleanse you.
Nenek,
I wonder if it was your good deeds that allowed us to perform our obligations easily.
I wonder if it was you being a good and obedient wife that made your passing an easy one.
Nenek,
we apologize for being so daif.
we apologize that whilst waiting for you to be cleansed, we unknowingly exposed your aurah.
Nenek,
I hope that in that few hours of our negligence, we hadn't tortured you or caused you much pain.
Nenek,
I miss you.
I do.
I miss your laughter.
I miss your smile.
No words could describe how i felt when i was there, assisting in the cleansing of the body.
I felt like crying, but I doubt Nenek will want to see me cry.
I still sit and ponder upon the last few moments i had with you.
I still try to visualise your face when i was at your bedside.
You may not remember who I am at that point of time, but it's okay.
Nenek,
you'll always be remembered.
For all the smiles that you carve on your face when we're all around you.
For all the smiles you put on for the camera.
I've never seen such a cheerful grandmother in my life.
I miss you Nenek. I do.
I truly regret not spending time with you.
But all the regrets in the world can never bring you back to life. You're seven feet under now.
I'll visit you soon, Nenek.
Once I've gained back my courage to face that you're gone.
Because right now, I'm at the most vulnerable, and silence and loneliness scares me.
Saturday, November 30, 2013
Wednesday, November 27, 2013
Tribute to dearest Nenek, Mymoon Binte Lambat
This 2 days have been a real blow to myself and the whole of my family. Rushed to Changi General Hospital after my second morning shift to visit Nenek who was critically ill. I initially thought that she has that hope of recovery seeing her condition being stable and all. She was responsive and squeezed my hands when i was talking to her and rubbing her cold palms.
Today, things took a 360 degree turn. When i reached the hospital, her blood pressure was dropping, though her heartbeat was beating normal. She was only assisted by the breathing machine, but was taken off the dialysis because her kidneys failed on her this morning. Her nasogastric fluid was also taken off because her body was rejecting any food entering her body.
It shook me, alot of times. I was praying she pull through this ordeal alive, but yet again it will be torturing for herself even if she were to survive. Hours passed, and her condition slowly declined. Dad asked if the doctor will pull her off her life support anytime soon. The doctor only answered that her heartrate's still beating normally thus it's a very hard decision to make. Her heartbeat will start dropping once her blood pressure is too low to even pump blood out. The reason for her low blood pressure even though her heartbeat's normal was due to her heart being unable to pump properly. It can expand but couldn't contract well.
Ya Allah, only you knew how i felt.
Flashbacks. flashbacks. Who would knew this year would be the last that I will be seeing you on Hari Raya? Who knew that this year, you wanted to eat the Marble Cake, i was supposed to bake it for you but I didn't. Who knew, I will never get to spend time with you anymore at Sengkang? Who knew. Who knew?
Nenek, you're in a better place now. You can be reunited with Tok Weng, abang Zul. I know you started to forget things when you first lost arwah Zul in 1998. When I lost tok weng i was too young, but I was aware that Tok had already gone "somewhere far".
Really. This ordeal, both mine and nenek's, taught me that promises should be kept, fulfilled and not delayed. You may never know if the promise will just remain a promise when that particular person is gone. Yes, we should say InshaAllah instead of promising someone, but there's a reason why it means "if Allah wills it". We're only human but to keep to our words will reflect on what type of a person we are. And by keeping to our words, we may indirectly prevent someone from going with a sense of resentment, which will only make you regret because you may never have the chance to tell the person how he or she means to you.
Maybe what I'm talking doesn't make any sense. I'm just too shocked, sad and lonely now. Someone who's supposed to be with me, disappeared to nowhere. Which surprises me because he can find the most convenient time to appear out of nowhere, but when i clearly needed someone, he's nowhere. He didn't even ask about my well being, he didn't even ask about how Nenek is doing, judging from the severity of the posts i put up on Facebook.
Perhaps I may partly be at fault because i never paid much attention to his family's well being. But he should have known by now how Family means to me. I'm unlike him, I do care about my family, my cousins and such. I care about their well being, irregardless of mom or dad's side.
If I didn't care about my family, I wouldn't cry when grandaunt cried when she mentioned about not being able to see me get married. Ya Allah, now I lost someone dear to me, I'm really out of words. Perhaps she may have alot of great-grandchildren, but I'm sure that deep inside, she wants to see a great-grandchild from her eldest son.
I may not be related directly to Nenek by flesh & blood, but she shows no indifference to me. There's no terms like adopted grandchild, whatsoever.
I will need to learn to show that i appreciate people around me, because right now, that's my biggest weakness. It's this ego that's hard to rid, probably because i was just raised that way. I care, but i don't show.
I'm going to miss you alot, dear Nenek.
And to you Muslim readers,
Do offer your al-fateha for my Nenek, Mymoon Binte Lambat.
Al-fateha.
Thursday, November 14, 2013
A letter for the Fiance, what commitment means now.
Dear fiancé,
If there's something I'm afraid of right now, it would be commitments.
Remember how I used to be so enthusiastic about settling down, getting a house of my own, making babies, planning my beautiful dream wedding, a 1 day event that I would want to remember for the rest of my life (provided the marriage is worth the bucks spent).
But over a span of 9 months that I'm engaged, not a single thing changed. I have went from being positive about basically everything to someone who won't even spare a second thought about anything.
Seeing couples get engaged after us, and that same couples already taking several steps ahead of us in terms of wedding preparations, really tick me off. Because honestly, 9 months after being engaged, we haven't planned a single thing, nor scout for any deco/catering vendors, photography services and the likes.
We were supposed to be tying the knot earliest next year, latest in February 2015. We were SUPPOSED to. The engagement has been extended and the wedding is set to be on November 2015. I am against it, but who am I anyway, people won't listen to me anyway, or why I am against it.
But because we must always TRY to understand other people's plight, so we must ALWAYS accommodate to other people's needs.
Right.
Like as if my parent's aren't getting older. Look, my dad is 64. a RETIREE. I have some medical condition. And I have some unresolved family issues that I want to break away from BADLY and as soon as I possibly can. But people won't understand that. This year's Hari Raya, my grandaunt cried when she learnt that I was already engaged, she cried saying if she can ever live to see me get married. WHICH BREAKS MY HEART I cried too. I have never really shed my tears in front of people I'm not comfortable with, but I did.
Maybe I'm still lucky my father is still in the pink of health even with his existing high blood pressure and knee pain, and that he hasn't developed any kind of sickness from all the lazing around watching TV all day. What if something happens to him and he doesn't live to see me get married and have his own grandchildren? It's bad enough that his only son passed away much too soon and all he have now is me, the adopted daughter who he relies on.
9 months on since the engagement, and it feels like the world's on my shoulder. With nothing planned, with nothing that I had imagined in my mind being accomplished, I am now left with nothing but regrets.
I regretted I took the risk and agreed on the engagement proposal. Why did I say risk? I risked my time and effort in investing for someone to change. Because someone was insisting that the engagement is going to bring some good, the responsibility that arises from being engaged will pressure him to do better in life, will give him the drive to work harder.
But 3 months into the engagement, all that I felt was misery, disappointments, hurt, deceit.
It had come to a point where I just suddenly break down into tears at home and screamed, like a patient in IMH, that I wanted to break off the engagement. And that is when, my parents learnt of the truth. The cold, hard truth.
I am not one who shares problems openly with my parents, especially relationship problems. Because somehow, parents will often think that they are much more experienced and will know what's best for their children. If I let them know of my problems, they'll judge, especially my father, and they'll start to think negatively of my partner, something that I wish to avoid. Besides, if my parents learn of the bad traits of my partner, it isn't going to be something good because if my fate is to get married with that same flawed person, my partner will have to live the whole of his life with the negative stigma and being constantly judged.
I know I'm not perfect, that I'm flawed in my own ways. I know I didn't handle my relationship problems well in the initial phase of dating; blasting and flaring away on facebook and all that crap. But if you had treated me better, then I wouldn't have find any reasons to complain about. And now, after 3+ years, you expect me to read your facial expressions like a book, something that I seriously can't master.
3 years on, all the wishes and dreams I had carved in my head, disappeared into thin air.
I am now afraid of commitment. Afraid of committing my time, effort and money just to see it go to waste. Wasted by people who claimed to appreciate all that I've done but no traces of them reciprocating what I did for them. No, I'm not asking for anything in return, I'm just asking for you to realize where you stand and the responsibilities you should be taking.
I seriously am wondering how women who earns 3x more than their husbands survive through the marriage. Is it through give & take, mutual understanding or sharing the burden together? Even though I earn much more than him, I do expect him to be the one footing all the bills, and I'll just chip in on the menial expenditures.
At the rate that this post is going, probably you may think "what a money minded bitch this is". Which is partly true, yes, I admit that I'm all in for the money because it's not easy living in shitty Singapore. I might as well don't get married if marriage will only burden me and strip me off my comfortable life. And I'm only saying COMFORTABLE life, not a life full of luxuries. I don't ask for a Prada or a Chanel for my birthday, and I don't expect to be chauffeured around in cars, I'm pretty much a simple young lady who gets her way around in her own bike with a brandless slingbag bought off qoo10.sg .
What good is a marriage if a large part of my role is to be overtaking the duties that a husband is supposed to shoulder?
What good is a marriage if a wife isn't being treated the way she needs to be treated? Let's not talk about being a wife yet, as of now, no words could express how disappointed I am to not getting the treatment that a women is supposed to get.
With the engagement hitting turbulence when not a single thing has been planned for the wedding, I shudder to even think about the problems that may arise if we really got so far and tied the knot. Because after marriage, the problems doesn't stop there. Perhaps it's a good thing we didn't manage to secure a ballot number for the HDB Build-to-order exercise early this year, otherwise I'm sure as heck I will be taking more risk and shoulder more responsibilities than I already am right now.
What if we had a house, and what if God grants me with a child 9 months after the wedding?
Who will foot the bills?
Who will pay for the renovation loans?
Who will foot the hospitalization bills?
Who will pay for groceries?
Who will be the one paying for most of the stuffs?
It's bad enough that I'm saving my side of the wedding on my own, and HE is able to split the cost of the wedding with his sister and the fiancé. So don't I deserve that extra attention and recognition since I'm a one man show when it comes to the expenses even though I earn ~3 times more than him?
Not sure if I should take more risk and wait till November twenty-fucking-fifteen and see if he has gotten his funds READY. because my wish is to get married and have kids by the time I turn 25, but in November 2015, I turn 26 and well, what's the point of hoping?
Someone refuse to understand of the condition I'm having. It's okay, I'm done being concern over other people and having other's interests at heart. I'm done sourcing out various means of improving oneself, because if you had cared, if you had the brains to think, you'd change right from the start you fell.
You know the saying "once bitten, twice shy"? I'm stupid enough to let myself be bitten countless of times yet still telling myself something positive will come out from this struggle. But I let myself struggle much to long and it's affecting me, the people around me. I should have turned into who I am the first few times shit happen, so that someone realizes the diamond that he's going to lose if he still decides to laze around and continue being useless to his ownself and he people around him.
I felt like I've been taken advantage of more than ever, and that I deserve much better treatment than what I'm getting now.
It's disappointing enough that someone whom you thought you loved and loved you back treat you this way. That someone feels that it's okay to be living off someone else's hard earned money. That it's okay to not take the initiative to improve and help shred the weight of the burden on someone else's shoulder.
It's easy to say that you appreciate my efforts, but right now I really appreciate if you could have proven that my efforts is indeed instilling a sense of change in yourself.
Oh wait, there's no more chances for you now. I might be gone even before you know it.
Yours Truly,
The fiancée whom you never knew.
If there's something I'm afraid of right now, it would be commitments.
Remember how I used to be so enthusiastic about settling down, getting a house of my own, making babies, planning my beautiful dream wedding, a 1 day event that I would want to remember for the rest of my life (provided the marriage is worth the bucks spent).
But over a span of 9 months that I'm engaged, not a single thing changed. I have went from being positive about basically everything to someone who won't even spare a second thought about anything.
Seeing couples get engaged after us, and that same couples already taking several steps ahead of us in terms of wedding preparations, really tick me off. Because honestly, 9 months after being engaged, we haven't planned a single thing, nor scout for any deco/catering vendors, photography services and the likes.
We were supposed to be tying the knot earliest next year, latest in February 2015. We were SUPPOSED to. The engagement has been extended and the wedding is set to be on November 2015. I am against it, but who am I anyway, people won't listen to me anyway, or why I am against it.
But because we must always TRY to understand other people's plight, so we must ALWAYS accommodate to other people's needs.
Right.
Like as if my parent's aren't getting older. Look, my dad is 64. a RETIREE. I have some medical condition. And I have some unresolved family issues that I want to break away from BADLY and as soon as I possibly can. But people won't understand that. This year's Hari Raya, my grandaunt cried when she learnt that I was already engaged, she cried saying if she can ever live to see me get married. WHICH BREAKS MY HEART I cried too. I have never really shed my tears in front of people I'm not comfortable with, but I did.
Maybe I'm still lucky my father is still in the pink of health even with his existing high blood pressure and knee pain, and that he hasn't developed any kind of sickness from all the lazing around watching TV all day. What if something happens to him and he doesn't live to see me get married and have his own grandchildren? It's bad enough that his only son passed away much too soon and all he have now is me, the adopted daughter who he relies on.
9 months on since the engagement, and it feels like the world's on my shoulder. With nothing planned, with nothing that I had imagined in my mind being accomplished, I am now left with nothing but regrets.
I regretted I took the risk and agreed on the engagement proposal. Why did I say risk? I risked my time and effort in investing for someone to change. Because someone was insisting that the engagement is going to bring some good, the responsibility that arises from being engaged will pressure him to do better in life, will give him the drive to work harder.
But 3 months into the engagement, all that I felt was misery, disappointments, hurt, deceit.
It had come to a point where I just suddenly break down into tears at home and screamed, like a patient in IMH, that I wanted to break off the engagement. And that is when, my parents learnt of the truth. The cold, hard truth.
I am not one who shares problems openly with my parents, especially relationship problems. Because somehow, parents will often think that they are much more experienced and will know what's best for their children. If I let them know of my problems, they'll judge, especially my father, and they'll start to think negatively of my partner, something that I wish to avoid. Besides, if my parents learn of the bad traits of my partner, it isn't going to be something good because if my fate is to get married with that same flawed person, my partner will have to live the whole of his life with the negative stigma and being constantly judged.
I know I'm not perfect, that I'm flawed in my own ways. I know I didn't handle my relationship problems well in the initial phase of dating; blasting and flaring away on facebook and all that crap. But if you had treated me better, then I wouldn't have find any reasons to complain about. And now, after 3+ years, you expect me to read your facial expressions like a book, something that I seriously can't master.
3 years on, all the wishes and dreams I had carved in my head, disappeared into thin air.
I am now afraid of commitment. Afraid of committing my time, effort and money just to see it go to waste. Wasted by people who claimed to appreciate all that I've done but no traces of them reciprocating what I did for them. No, I'm not asking for anything in return, I'm just asking for you to realize where you stand and the responsibilities you should be taking.
I seriously am wondering how women who earns 3x more than their husbands survive through the marriage. Is it through give & take, mutual understanding or sharing the burden together? Even though I earn much more than him, I do expect him to be the one footing all the bills, and I'll just chip in on the menial expenditures.
At the rate that this post is going, probably you may think "what a money minded bitch this is". Which is partly true, yes, I admit that I'm all in for the money because it's not easy living in shitty Singapore. I might as well don't get married if marriage will only burden me and strip me off my comfortable life. And I'm only saying COMFORTABLE life, not a life full of luxuries. I don't ask for a Prada or a Chanel for my birthday, and I don't expect to be chauffeured around in cars, I'm pretty much a simple young lady who gets her way around in her own bike with a brandless slingbag bought off qoo10.sg .
What good is a marriage if a large part of my role is to be overtaking the duties that a husband is supposed to shoulder?
What good is a marriage if a wife isn't being treated the way she needs to be treated? Let's not talk about being a wife yet, as of now, no words could express how disappointed I am to not getting the treatment that a women is supposed to get.
With the engagement hitting turbulence when not a single thing has been planned for the wedding, I shudder to even think about the problems that may arise if we really got so far and tied the knot. Because after marriage, the problems doesn't stop there. Perhaps it's a good thing we didn't manage to secure a ballot number for the HDB Build-to-order exercise early this year, otherwise I'm sure as heck I will be taking more risk and shoulder more responsibilities than I already am right now.
What if we had a house, and what if God grants me with a child 9 months after the wedding?
Who will foot the bills?
Who will pay for the renovation loans?
Who will foot the hospitalization bills?
Who will pay for groceries?
Who will be the one paying for most of the stuffs?
It's bad enough that I'm saving my side of the wedding on my own, and HE is able to split the cost of the wedding with his sister and the fiancé. So don't I deserve that extra attention and recognition since I'm a one man show when it comes to the expenses even though I earn ~3 times more than him?
Not sure if I should take more risk and wait till November twenty-fucking-fifteen and see if he has gotten his funds READY. because my wish is to get married and have kids by the time I turn 25, but in November 2015, I turn 26 and well, what's the point of hoping?
Someone refuse to understand of the condition I'm having. It's okay, I'm done being concern over other people and having other's interests at heart. I'm done sourcing out various means of improving oneself, because if you had cared, if you had the brains to think, you'd change right from the start you fell.
You know the saying "once bitten, twice shy"? I'm stupid enough to let myself be bitten countless of times yet still telling myself something positive will come out from this struggle. But I let myself struggle much to long and it's affecting me, the people around me. I should have turned into who I am the first few times shit happen, so that someone realizes the diamond that he's going to lose if he still decides to laze around and continue being useless to his ownself and he people around him.
I felt like I've been taken advantage of more than ever, and that I deserve much better treatment than what I'm getting now.
It's disappointing enough that someone whom you thought you loved and loved you back treat you this way. That someone feels that it's okay to be living off someone else's hard earned money. That it's okay to not take the initiative to improve and help shred the weight of the burden on someone else's shoulder.
It's easy to say that you appreciate my efforts, but right now I really appreciate if you could have proven that my efforts is indeed instilling a sense of change in yourself.
Oh wait, there's no more chances for you now. I might be gone even before you know it.
Yours Truly,
The fiancée whom you never knew.
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