My dad (or Apak in the Perakian way)

He’s 87 this year, most of his friends are no longer in this world, and few that are still alive is not even fit to stand on their own mostly, lying in bed waiting for the final call. My dad is still strong, strong enough to travel the distance from my sister’s to the nearest coffee shop(about 500m) for his daily ‘teh tarik’ session.

Surviving the British, Japanese, Communist and the Umnos is a big achievement for him, not the materialistic way. He was a farmer, a fisherman, a policeman, a newspaper vendor, an activist and even a construction worker at one time. From radio to black and white tv to the super pretentious Astro satellite tv, my god! He’s been around for a long time.

He used to write letters to me while I was in the UK, with old Malay spelling method, where the letter ‘h’ seems to appear in every word.

Kehadhapan anakanda yang di shayangi,

Belajarlah bershunggoh – shunggoh, kita orang shusah…

I should’ve frame it back then, but enjoying life was the wrong priority of choice, maybe the excitements of being oversea was too much to handle. I did it my way those days, but how I wish for a better plan and execution. Regrets, it is too much to mention. Same goes to my dad, he must have made mistakes along the way, 3 times further than the journey I’ve completed.

He needs someone to talk, someone that can listen to the adventurous journey. My mom was there before she suffered the strokes attack, my sisters were there before they were assigned to attend to my mom’s needs on that bed, I was there before I entered boarding school 17 years ago. We can’t be with him all the time now, but we do our best to spend time whenever we can, be it after work or even weekends.

But sometime that is just not good enough, and he is looking for someone who understands, someone who traveled the distance and survived. They are the heritage and the historians of this country and it is about time the government looks at them and look-up for ways to make them feel needed. Don’t just blame the children’s; stop telling bad things about places of which old folks stays together. Stop building the unnecessary buildings, build up a nice enjoyable parks where old folks can get together, and please don’t tell me they should only be doing ‘ibadat’ at the nearest masjid.