Dear Mom, it takes six months to write this…
11th of June 2025
A bunch of aesthetic posts on Instagram keep saying that grief is the final step of love. The final price of loving someone is grief when they leave. My cynical me would say that it is cheesy. Yes, everything is either cheesy or funny—until it happens to you.
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January was a month I always eagerly anticipated since this was the month my mom delivered me to earth. Then, as I grew older, I realized a pattern; my dad passed away in January, as my beloved grandmother also left me forever in the same month. I stopped waiting for January ever since.
A few days before my last birthday, I got a phone call from my sister. When you are old enough, a sudden phone call without a message from a family member probably does not bring good news. I answered the call, and at the other end, my sister told me that Mom got sick and rushed to the hospital. That very pattern lurked in my mind.
We were separated by more than 300 kilometers. Around half a day’s trip. I was hopeless. I couldn’t leave that day due to work. However, my wife offered to go earlier to help my sister take care of my mom while I would go two days later on the weekend. I was lucky since my wife and Mom could get along well. When driving my wife to the train station, I cried along the way. My wife told me that everything would be okay. I couldn’t stop. I kept crying.
On the way back home from the station, I made a stop and checked my phone. I saw a missed call from my sister. I called her back and she told me that Mom was getting worse. It was around 22.00. To hell with work. I hurried home and planned to order the next train ticket at 02.30 once I arrived. Several minutes after I arrived, my phone buzzed again. I picked up my phone and saw my sister’s name on the screen. Before even answering the call, I knew why she called. I knew that something I had always been afraid of as a child had happened.
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My family was quite strict with our source of entertainment. We hadn’t had access to private TV stations until the end of the 1990s. Yet, we had a lot of books and we subscribed to Jawa Pos every Sunday. On a Sunday afternoon around 1994. I watched a show on TVRI about tourism. The show that day was about Kuburan Alam in Toraja, broadcasting a direct and close shot of the human remains. I remember running to Mom, checking whether she was okay. She was taking a nap on her bed as I rushed and hugged her tightly because I didn’t want to lose her. A naïve little me. Of course everyone will leave eventually.
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The early 90s were the era of Tamiya due to the animation series Dash! Yonkuro aired on TVRI. Indeed, such a trend brought merchandise hype, including the Tamiya toys. Even when we lived in a small town and the merchandise was so damn expensive, some of my school friends still could get the original Tamiya cars from the series. It was fine at first when my friends had those cars while I didn’t. I could deal with that. But when one of them finally had the Emperor, I almost couldn’t stand it. But I didn’t say anything. It was unusual for me to ask for something to my parents. I didn’t know how, but my mom understood that I wanted a Tamiya.
She then bought me a counterfeit Tamiya. A cheap knock-off. The car’s colors were green and black with the text of Sunflower on its wings. It wasn’t the best-looking car toy ever, but I had to be satisfied with it. My car was always the slowest when racing with my friends’ original Tamiya cars. But I was not ashamed of that. For me, being understood without having to say a word is already enough.
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December 2008. At the park in the PPI building of FIB, I called my mom and cried. It was the day when the people of the deanery told me that they accused me of plagiarism when doing my undergraduate thesis.
I passed the exam in August 2008, but the dean didn’t want to sign my thesis without saying why. I kept going to the deanery and waited for the dean’s signature from August to December. Almost every day, I went to the office and waited. Whenever I asked the dean’s secretary if I might see the dean to ask about the signature, the answer would be: “No, the dean doesn’t have time”, “No, the dean is busy”, or simply “No, you can’t”.
I lost the opportunity to graduate in November due to this situation. In December, I was determined to solve this. So, I waited from 09.00 to 16.00 every active day. I wasn’t alone. Several students had a similar problem with the dean. By the end of December, the vice dean called me and she said that I was accused of plagiarism and I was required to show the evidence that I wrote the thesis on my own. When I asked for proof of their accusation, she said that it was because my writing lacked grammatical mistakes. What a silly argument, since what’s the use of supervisor 1 and 2 if my thesis was full of grammatical mistakes? Besides, the burden of proof should be on their side, not on mine.
I left the office mad. I called my mom to tell her the situation. To which she replied that she doesn’t have any idea. She said that she believes in me, but she doesn’t know what to do. I cried listening to my mom say that. My mom always had the solutions for everything, but that day she was helpless. She was a vocational school graduate, and she didn’t know anything about thesis writing and plagiarism. She knew and believed that her son didn’t do anything wrong, but she couldn’t offer anything to help. I could feel the sadness in her voice. That’s why I cried.
Two or three years later, I learned that the dean was removed from office after prolonged protests due to the allegations of misconduct and corruption.
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I love writing obituaries because I like remembering good things about people. However, I never dreamed of writing one for my own mom. I am writing this to tell anyone that I miss my mom so much, and I always keep memories of her.