Saturday, 29 July 2023 23.11 West Indonesia Time.
And at the Hour of Death, I feel grief got hold of me. But also release, the gladness that comes for the fact that he is released from all of his pain. The man, the boy, who taught me to be charming. The old soul who taught me how to harness empathy; the simple fact that we all want an acknowledgement of existence. That we can provide such need just by a simple smile and attentive listening. That if we have the courage to greet first, we would have the initiative in relationships.
He was an overt Bollywood aficionado in a time before Slum Dog Millionaire. Risked ridicule in 1999-2002 South Jakarta high school scene, when only anything Western pop culture was deemed cool. But conformists can never be charming.
We lost contact for years. He was a little lost after high school. We were in a gang. Lived our lives being a collective, bulging with hormones and no adult responsibility. That carefree teenage years attitude where you resolve life issues with laughters, substances, or violence is not suitable for growing up.
With a classic “Boys Don’t Cry” attitude, he preferred contact on his own terms: you don’t find him, he finds you. He contacted me again last month, announcing his terminal illness: liver cancer. I showed up. People showed up. The high school gang, old friends whom he ghosted. He was that charming that we looked past that.
We reconnected. In the impeding death, we caught up on our lives. Everything is good again. We found the children, the teenagers, we were once before (sans the need to prove ourselves to be the Man).
He kept his religion. I am liberated. We talked of after life, his views and mine. The Resurrection Day and the Nothing. Faith is relative, but Death is absolute. We knew that was a goodbye conversation.
Farewell and good night, Teuku Syafriansah aka Habil aka Baralig (the Mad Arab).
