Miera's Song

While browsing my facebook homepage, I stumbled upon my niece's notes and proceed to read on. It took a second or so for me to immerse into her thoughts. It was a couple of notes she penned about her late mother, my beloved sister. What tugged my heart-string was her innocent confession of not really knowing the mother she lost when she was only nine and at the same time sympathised her youngest sister who, till these days is still clueless about their mother. Then, like an open dam, I cried like the day my sister died...

Miera wrote in such casual yet endearing manner about her mother with accompanying wedding photographs of my late sister as guide. Miera kept on heaping praises about her mother's beauty that she said, unfortunately, she did not inherit... but made up for her brains that she (Miera) has. "...sayangnya aku tak mewarisi  kecantikan arwah ami (mummy)... but at least, I have her brains.... arwah ami seorang yang terpelajar dan sangat pandai... and I'm proud that ami had studied in STF..." At one part I burst out a giggle when she wrote, " betapa cantiknya ami... patutlah arwah addy (daddy) sangat memuja ami!"

When it got to a part about the famous black and white portrait of my sister, which apparently everyone of them (Miera has two brothers and a sister) had resized, and slipped it into thier wallets, the memory of her just flashed before my eyes. It was one portrait that once upon a time became an obsession and prized possession of my eldest nephew, Hezri, that he hanged  it so conspicuously in his living room in Johor. I had the same feeling as told by Miera about this particular portrait....

...The first time I entered Hezri's house and on seeing the enlarged picture of kak Nyah, I was overcome with emotions. I went a bit hysterical. My crying would not stop and I was inconsolable. It was the feeling of that she was still around.... seeing her at the doorstep, with open arms... welcoming you... and suddenly, upon reaching her, she was nowhere to be found... And they say, crying is infectious, my poor mother too drowned in her own sadness. To us, losing a sister was devastating but to a mother it was more than that. Anyway, the touching part came when Miera said her mother's eyes in that portrait bore some sort of a mystery that she wished she could decipher them. Yes, I clearly remember that.

There is a question hang in the air posed by Miera's youngest sister, Umai. " Can I ever be like her? I wish I could know her... why was she taken away from me so soon?" Ahh...this is hard... But I left a comment for her anyway, that the least she could do is by having some of  kak Nyah's good qualities. Arwah was way too nice... a compassionate person.  Her humility always won people over, even though she knew she was a 'somebody's' wife.... that did not change her. She was beautiful inside and out...
If only you knew her...
*Umai was only three when her mother passed away. Yes, I was there.. in fact all of us were there on the day her mother died. She was oblivious of the solemn situation. She was seen playing and sometimes burst out laughing loudly until someone had to quieten her. But when the time came for kak Nyah's body to be wrapped up, she suddenly became pensive.. and clinging to her sister, Miera, who herself was still small, she tore all of our hearts when she said, " Ami kena pakai stokin ke? Kesian ami... nanti dia sejuk kan?" Ahhh.....

I can go on and on and on.... but, Umai, since you have been brought up by a different hand, I will not interfere into your less known qualities that has become ingrained through years you've passed through. I know, you've been asked to forget your mother...

Then again,  it pleased me when Miera, in her notes, exclaimed to her surprise that the wedding dress she had designed and hope one day she will wear on her big day was exactly the same one her mother wore! See, the apple won't fall far from the tree!  And to that, she (and me, included) couldn't have thanked her other aunt, Wan Chu, more,  for lending her kak Nyah's old wedding photos. ( I didn't know Miera was in Ipoh last weekend and was there digging for her mother's stuff!)

I think I have to stop now... my poor heart could not take this anymore. Redha saja. But before that, I just had  to tell my gentle readers that the four of them were tested with another tragedy when their father, some years later after their mother's demise, was brutally slain in his own house by intruders. Sadly, Umai was there to witness the murder. Her late father, was then the  A/Ocpd of Kulai, and the news of his death became headlines because it shook the nation of the daring killing of a police personnel. Nothing to be proud of, but the children, as anyone could imagine were traumatised.  

To my nieces Miera and Maira., and nephews Hezri and Ezwan, ...Ateh always pray for your well-beings. I love you all all the same... even though everyone in the family says Ezwan is special to me in a way...

Al-Fatihah buat arwah kak Nyah....