Update

Yes....this post is yesterday's news. (Apasal kau lambat publish?) If wanting to publish a thought nevertheless of the date being lag does not show enough determination nak menghupdate, I don't know what else is. At least aku hupdate, takdelah macam orang tu, laki takde rumah barulah rajin...hari lain tak rajin...nampak sangat ber overtime malam-malam. Pastu besok bila ter mengand..depressed lah memanjang. Cisss!!!

Yesterday was my late brother would have been 32nd birthday.

I think today, enough lah nak nak mengumpat orang and sebagai kakak yang mithali (and ever so guilty) I should write about him.

I do wonder what he may look like at this age. I am a female version of him, but I have to say (not because he is my brother) that he is a handsome looking young man. He was already 6ft tall when he was 19...so I think he would stretch to 6'2 now.

As a family, we have agreed not to question his fate, of why did he have to go so young. He was ill but the illness was too rapid to kill him and we never had that chance to say goodbye.

He died at 4pm and was brought back home on the Maghrib the same day. When he was there lying at the corner of our Paroi Jaya living room facing the kiblat, I pray Allah to give me strength not to fall asleep until I see the last of him.

I was reading Yassin non-stop. I can feel people hugging me from behind, and I don't know who they were. I was hoping that his eyes will open, but they never did.

When people are not looking, my hands are touching his very,very cold body. He was so stiff. He still look the same, only pale.I keep asking him quietly, get up..please get up. But he didn't and he can't.

We all, my brothers and sisters slept next to him. I don't think we all slept. I didn't and I saw my sister's (the one he was very close to) was jerking non-stop. She was crying in her sleep.

When he was lowered to the ground, I said goodbye from afar. There was just too many people. I was angry. People just plain nosy, why? We have the right to be near him, but no..semua orang nak tengok and we were left behind. My two brothers is already inside the ground, doing their manly bit. My father was just too weak to see all that.

I can hear my father cried 'you were supposed to see me off, not the other way around'.

I cannot remember telling him how much I love him, and I think I never tell any of my brothers and sisters the same.People always say that..masa diorang hidup lah kena cakap...but do we really want to do that without them thinking kita ni bertebiat?

Loving brothers and sister (or even parents) are unspoken love. We tell them we love them when we were to young to understand what love means, and perhaps too young to have all that sense of vanity.

I count my blessing that we never had that major 'aku menyampah tengok muka kau' or 'kau celaka' moment. I was in the boarding school when he was still in primary school and off to UK when he was a in his early teens. There was never a time to bergaduh.

But now when I think hard, none of us ever bergaduh with him...simply because he was such an angel.He loves everyone.He loves the cats...he brought stray cats home and feed them. Everytime I see a cat (or when I'm being horrible to one) I'll think of him.

When he was desperately ill, he don't remember me. I was near and he can't see. But mother said, eveytime I wasn't there...he never stop asking 'where Angah?'

I was not there when he died. If only I don't have to care about my stupid toiletries...but I did, and I think he went deliberately.

Yes, so he is 32 yesterday. He was 19 when he went. And I still miss him dearly.

Al-Fatihah.