The Other Side of Growing Up

"I don't want my mom getting older!" 

First time I heard that, I laughed. I thought that Vanessa, my SHS friend, was very funny yet weird when she told me something like that. But years later, I think that she is right. The more we get older, the more we have a chance to face the fact that our beloved one might be disappear from our lives. 

First time I experienced it at 2011, when I was at 3rd grade of SHS. My grandfather was sick. He was hospitalized for months because of stroke. Last, doctor had to make a hole in his throat, so he could eat, used an interspace.

You know, that condition made me shock. I was rarely see him. A year ago, he came to our house, still healthy, tall and gallant. Then somehow, I met him in a hospital, in a condition that I never expected before. I tried to hide my tears, but in the end, I cried for hours in Elizabeth Hospital's chapel. Lucky me, months later, when he passed away, I could accompany him until his last breath. I think, that was the first time I felt traumatic over a decease. 

However, five years later, another decease came.

At 2015, doctor diagnosed my grandmother with melanomia, a type of cancer. Knowing that, I was freak out that I will forfeit her. There was a phase after KKN that I almost lost my mind because I tried to endure my sadness and fear by kept staying at Yogyakarta, hoped that somehow, my final task's proposal could finish unknowingly, so after that, I could come home heartily. But of course that childish wish did not come true. For three months, I made no progress, until one day, when the condition began unbearable, I decided to visit a campus psychologist. She said, "It's okay to come home and meet her."

What she didn't know, it was not a good suggestion to ask me to come home, because when I met my grandmother, suddenly I burst in tears, just like a child in the kindergarten. My father said, when someone is diagnosed with a disease which has no cure and chance to recover, somehow he becomes more determined than his family and inner circle, and that was what I do; a fatal movement which made her dazed and puzzled.

You know, until months later, shoved by my fear and melancholy, I learned how to knit, just to make her happy with a shawl as her anniversary gift. A last gift from me because a year later, at 1st April 2016, she couldn't celebrate my 23th birthday and her 60th wedding anniversary with my grandfather. And worst, I couldn't accompany her until his last breath. It was my fault, I did not notice my intuition, even when I still had two chances to suddenly go and accompanied her at hospital during that day.

When I told Ocit, my friend who becomes a Jesuit frater about this matter, he said,

"Some said, that's the pain of being mature, perhaps."

Yhea, Ocit was right. In every decease, we will learn about something. Just like when my grandfather passed away, I learned how to forgive. Then, when my grandmother passed away, I learned how to be though, because she was the strongest woman I know, even in her most severe pain. But now, after the storm subsided and I experience no decease, sometimes that worry comes again. A worry that I will face another decease of my beloved person in circumstances.

Does it an alert for me to learn to grasp my beloved one not too tight? Yes, perhaps.