DEATH

What a stressful Sunday!
I woke up at dawn, thinking that someone tried to break in. I was so nervous that when morning came and I heard the three maids talked outside my room in Javanese that I hardly understood, I assumed they talked about the bad guy. My room location is likely to be the first visited by the robbers, if any, and I would be the first one to get killed. But when I asked one of them, she didn’t even know what I was talking about.
Maybe I was affected too much by my friends’ comment about the security of my room when they walked me home after we spent two hours singing (or yelling) at karaoke. The curtains that cover the glass wall of my room have some uncovered parts, but I don’t know what to do with them. That’s why I always feel insecure everytime I undress.

I decided to skip church this Sunday, which is a shame. I was so passionate and excited to find a new place to worship nearby. I longed for a community where my spiritual life could be nurtured, and I enjoyed the worship because the English songs were familiar to my ears, and it had been ages since I sang them in a congregation like that. I even asked the pastor to give me the registration sheet to sign up for their Bible study, but then I got sick on Wednesday so I couldn’t come. There’s a guy who works there and I met him for the first time in my new boarding house when I was hanging my wet clothes upstairs. We talked a bit and then after that he began to stalk me. He said he had begun noticing me since I first came, and then he asked me to go to a service for young adult, and he always sits down in front of my room whenever I come home from work, and it’s bugging me. I don’t even know his name, and I don’t wanna know. I hate the way he hums the same line of a song everytime he passes my room, as if he wants to impress me with his vibrating voice, though it helps me to know that he’s there and so I won’t come out of my room just to avoid him. If I always smiled whenever I met him before, now I started to only nod, and maybe later I will ignore him at all, if he keeps doing that.
Such a shame! I can’t go worship to a place just because of a stalker!

So, to kill my Sunday time, I tried to reduce the pile of unanswered emails. This time I picked those in Italian, trying my best to understand it all with a help of my dictionary. It’s been so long since I made a conscious effort to improve my Italian vocab. I’m also nervous about the phone call I am supposed to receive tonight at 9 pm from Trieste, Italy. It’s one of my Italian penpals named Cristina who insisted on calling me, though I warned her that my Italian is so poor (I can only write, but never really speak it after so long), and that we may not understand each other. But she wrote “Non ti preoccupare io ti parlerò in italiano LENTAMENTE!” (Don’t worry I will speak Italian with you SLOWLY!)..and so here I am, nervously trying to think what to say. While doing that, my mind was distracted by a pitiful sob of a grown up man, followed by a chant of people that I recognized as a chant when someone dies. And everything made me ill-at ease. I put an earphone in a hurry and listen to Shania Twain’s songs instead, but the nervous feeling is still there. I’ve never faced death of the beloved ones before. There has been no death within my core family, except my brother. Mom and Dad told me of how they had twin babies, 9 years before I was born. One of them died three days later, the other one is still alive until now, and we usually have a great time together watching football on tv. So, if there’s death around me, there’s a fear inside that I don’t know how to erase it. I don’t know how I will react when someone so dear to me dies (which of course, will happen someday, whether I like it or not). Will I cry for weeks (like when one of my kittens was dead, attacked by a dog), or even months, years, forever? Imagining the unbearable pain, I sometime think, maybe it’s better if I die first so I don’t have to be sad. But it is also such a selfish thought and wish when I think of people who would be crying over my death. My parents are getting old now. My Dad is getting slow because of his age. If before, it was them who always seemed to worry about me, now I think I am more worried about them. I really wish them a long life and great health. I want to do so many things for them that I still cant now. I also want my future kids to know the wonderful grandparents like they are, especially since I’ve never known how it feels to know my grandparents.

One thing consoling about death is that I know where I and most of the people I love will go after we die, to a far better place than this failing world, even more beautiful than Italy, the country I have wanted to visit all my life.

So, I am not afraid to die. I’m ready to be with Jesus in heaven anytime. It is the sorrow that death always leaves on earth that I dread so much.