CHAPTER 88: The 'Pak Lah' that I knew.......

Life, ..........can be unfair.

The cousin of my father, Abdullah bin Taib, passed away today.

I reached home around 4:40pm, and found that just as I was to open the gates, my mother had just arrived as well, with her sister (nobody was at home). As we went in our house, putting away stuffs like shoes and bags, the phone rang. All three of us only just came in the house, and my mother picked up the phone. Life at that moment seemed normal and regular-everyday usual.
But as my mother talked and continued talking, it was obvious that from the reaction she was giving, something grieve had occurred. It was definitely something with death, I could sense it from the countless times that my mother kept saying * laa ilaha illallah….. As she kept on talking and asking stuff like ”where” and ”when” and”how” and…….evidently being shocked. Both my aunt and me waited to know what actually happened. As she hung up the phone, it was then that my mother told that my father’s cousin had passed away. When I heard it was ‘Pak Lah’ that had passed away, I was sure that in a time of 2, 3 seconds, it felt like an eternity, and my body & mind went blank.

He was on his way to a town in Terengganu this morning, I can’t remember exactly which one, but it was for the purpose of visiting the funeral of the mother of his boss. My father’s cousin had gone with 4 other people, in a car. At this moment, I don’t know much detail, but what had happened was that the car they were in had collided with a lorry or trailer.
The four other people were said to be gravely, seriously injured. My father’s cousin died on the spot.
My mother said that it was his son who had called our home. His wife and children were already on the way to the East Coast.
Just as my mother finished the conversation, I heard my father arriving home. As he came in, he told us that he already knew what happened. One of my father’s relatives had told him about what happened. He got the call while he was stuff in a traffic jam going back home from his Quranic classes.

My father’s cousin was known among family members, relatives & friends as ‘Lah’ (short form of his name). Whenever my parents talked about him to me or my brothers, the called him as ‘Pak Cik Lah’, but most of the time, they referred him in a shorter way simply as ‘Pak Lah’. The same way as our PM is being called, except that when pronouncing his name, his name was always pronounced with a Kelantanese dialect to it, as my father’s cousin is from Kelantan. So, ‘Lah’ was pronounced or sounds like ‘Lokh’, and ‘Pak Lah’ sounded like ‘Pok Lokh’.
‘Pak Lah’ was a man who was in his early fifties. My parents told me that he was like 2 or 3 years away from retirement, and they told me that ‘Pak Lah’ had numerously told them before that he was looking forward to retiring.
He holds a senior position in the banking industry that he’s involved in (not sure which one). I think it’s better to say that he’s been a successful man here on the world. He has a family, drives a Mercedes, and the past 3-4 years had bought a house somewhere in Kota Damansara (the same area my parents had bought a house for my brother).

At the time we were all at home, everything was focused on one thing, and it was all in a frenzy mode and time kept ticking away like a stopwatch.
My parents decided that they had to go to Kota Bharu, as they said that ‘Pak Lah’s body was to be sent to Kota Bharu.
So everything was in a rush mode. My father decided to go back to his hometown via airplane, and website of both Air Asia and MAS Airlines were accessed, to purchase tickets online. As I was helping out searching for flight details to KB from KLIA on both sites, and helping out my father filling out the purchasing tickets forms, it was during this time that the house phone and father’s handphone kept ringing, all receiving calls from his relatives regarding the incident. It was during this period too that my father himself was making calls to other relatives to inform about what had happened, besides making calls to his brothers in Kota Bharu to make arrangements and calling his cousins to find out how they would be getting to Kelantan.
My mother was busy packing clothes and stuffs. Even my aunt (mother’s side) that had came last night and had planned to stay here for a couple of days, had to call up one of her sons to pick her up, due to what happened.
When you are dealing with death, everything else stops or is suspended ……and you are rushing to do different things in a short time.

Even though I do not meet my relatives very much, and I rarely see them (either cousins, uncles, aunts, ………..), and that I don’t really have close ties with them, Pak Lah was one that I admired. It was with his character and personality.
What I would say about him is that Pak Lah was a friendly man. He always smiles whenever you meet him. He’s the sort of person that’s amiable, and any person can easily interact with him.
And my father mentioned to me that he was very close to his cousin.

Throughout the time I was purchasing the tickets for my parents, it was also around this time that my father planned with me on what kind of timeline to follow for the next few hours. ‘Cause you see, my father planned to go to KLIA from KL Sentral. We only managed to find a flight that departs directly to Kota Bharu tonight via MAS Airlines at 10:30pm. As the direct train to KLIA from KL Sentral takes about 1 hour, and considering traffic jam and getting the tickets at the counter, my father and I planned what’s a suitable time to be at KL Sentral. 7:45pm to leave the house.
But we ended up leaving at 7:15pm just to be on the safe side.

Pak Lah was one relative who would regularly visit my family here, like 5-6 times a year at our home, considering that he himself works in KL and his family is here (and considering that my father’s brothers and sisters are not living in KL or Selangor). I remember, once in awhile, he would bring a box of oranges or mandarins for us.
Besides, over the past 5-7 years, Pak Lah always brings his family along to visit my family here during Hari Raya, especially on the first day of Raya. Usually it would be on the second or third day of Raya that he would bring back his family back to his kampung in KB.

As I was driving my parents to KL Sentral, we were all wondering when was the last time that we saw Pak Lah. My parents kept mentioning the fact that they had not seen him for quite some time now. We believe that the last time we met him was when he came over during the first day of Raya last year.
……….. at this moment, there’s like around 2 months before Raya for this year……..
As I was driving, the thought that was lingering on my mind was that my father saying that he was terkilan that he couldn’t persuade Pak Lah to follow him perform Umrah this year. My father said that he always had asked his cousin about performing Umrah.
He had the complications of work and time, but my parents said Pak Lah always thought about it, doing Hajj or Umrah. He never set foot on Mecca.

Thinking back, the moment I found out that he died, it was feeling unexplainable …….sad. Even as I’m writing all of this, some times, I’m taking pauses, …….just thinking nothing.
The thing about death is, it’s one of fact of life that throws a real smack on your face, & it’s difficult to recover from.

Remembering back now, the last ever conversation that I had with Pak Lah was through phone, back in the later days of May 2006 (just some days before June came in). That time my parents were away on a holiday in Bali, and nobody was at home except me. He called up to inform that my brother’s house at Kota Damansara (which had been inhabited since purchased), one of the windows was not closed properly. He actually got the news from a neighbour, and he called up my home just to inform about that, calling to notify that my brother go check about it. I believe that what he said when he called was “…..Siape tu…..Amir?...ahhhh…..ni Lah ni……..”. I remember telling him my parents were in Bali.
Strange now, ……thinking that was to be the final conversation I had with Pak Lah.

It’s another fact of life that sucks. When you’re a child and as you grow, you come to know about people around you. And as you grow older, these people would evidently leave the world, no matter what and no matter how or on what circumstances.
Liku-liku kehidupan.

As I left my parents at KL Sentral, and as I drove back home, I believe it was the first time that I drove alone without turning on the radio or putting some music on.

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(On a separate note, I would like to say that the process involved in searching for available flights on both Air Asia’s and MAS Airlines’ websites, when they were loading and searching for available flights, was damn bloody slow. It took like 5 minutes just to wait for the page showing available flight details to show up. Apart from that, they had like 5-6 sections of different pages that were linked to each other where among them you had to fill up your personal and mode of payment details ….it all takes time.
I suppose that when the developers of these online air ticketing system developed them, they didn’t have in mind that there would be certain users who would want to purchase tickets online as quickly as possible as these people would maybe be in a hurried state of some sort.
They should ensure that when their system is searching for available flights, it should give quick results just like how fast Google gives you results.)

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