UNTITLED

I believe that a smile lasts longer than anything else in the world. Proof me wrong but, hey, if your never experienced a smile for yourself, then what do you have to say to defend yourself? Nonsense, would I have said.

Father, I hope it did not bother you anymore that I, by any chance, writing you a hideous letter I know you would never read anyway. But I have got to talk to you about a fact. I suddenly feel the urge to tell you this.

I highly understand that you yourself might have realized this as well when you were alive back then as I too get the insight to understand this matter. This is about one of your son; your oldest son to be more specific – that he is just so much like you. Both physically and mentally (and his flame for God too!). He’s got your hair, your warming smile if I not to say he was charming lest, your posture, your calmness, your mind, etcetera etcetera. He, too, is the best hugger in the world. He made people feel really accepted for who they truly are. He, dear Father, is a person so much like your replica if I am allowed to say anything more than just a twin to you.

If you would ask me anything about your eldest, I would have said that he has been a good ambassador of you all this time (I mean like yeah obviously; he’s got your genes). And to say least, he is such a generous person in his smiley ways; a jolly ol’ soul to cherish. He is so much like you in his utter most within the fact that he remembers things people do best and ask them to do it for him – just like you. Really REALLY just like you. I realized we never had conversations when you were alive, Father. But I can tell from the way people tell about you that you both did this one thing the same way. You inherit it to him. The same as though I didn’t get to meet him or to talk to him much as you, Father, I did feel really good when he asked me those questions he asked.

But that wasn’t it. There was something else.

There is simply something about your son that made me want to hug him and stay in it for the whole time yesterday; something I never felt wanting to do in all the times in my life. His hug is loaded with warmth, comfort and so much love. Have you ever been hugged by him Father? Dozens, I believe. I can somehow tell that his lost of you had cost him a lot of emotion in the last couple days. Yet the least I could do is hugging him and feeling like staying in his cuddle all day if I could. He reminds me of how much I would love a guy to be like him for my future: someone who is as comfortable as he is in his hug and nothing less in loving God.

I could really say nothing earlier because I literally had no idea of what he went through in the days as much as what I thought he might have had. But again, Father, no words could ever ressurect you but the words of God itself and yet I cannot immortize your lost by writing about it. He’s gone through too much “deep condolences, pastor” and such other similar sentences without even knowing how numb have he been with those phrases to differ which phrase means more sincerity than the other. You wouldn’t have guessed how many people which are alike that said those sentences to try to at least give him the comfort they thought could’ve save him from when all I have to give was a hug. Am I terrible, Father?

I hope you’re not bored yet hearing my all-over-fuss about a hug bla bla bla Father. But I promise you these are the last couple things I would told you about him. After the morning ceremony that Sunday, I lined up with the crowd. I ever wanted to say something to your son or his wife but still, I told you that I had nothing to say. All comforts are comfortless. I remained clueless. I asked the Holy Spirit but it said nothing until the moment when I approached her and kissed her ripe-apple cheeks. Those words, oh my God, dear Father, was the most consumingly peaceful set of words I’ve ever imagined being said sincere out of myself in as much as I know that I was clueless until last minute. You know Father, you should’ve seen me do it, really. Oh, I know it might sound funny to you – but I do feel peaceful after saying it. I asked her to simply keep smiling since that moment on. And then, another hug for your son.

Even though the second hug just went for a milisecond of life, Father, I feel revived. His acceptance made me feel really fuzzy. He wasn’t at all surprisingly warm to me and to all people he’s met I believe. And guess what, Father? Not every guy in this life I have offer the deepest gift of my heart: a hug.

RIP Senior Pastor Opa Jonathan Tahir

Bandung 1931 – Jakarta 2014

“I want to leave a mark. But Van Houten: The marks humans leave are too often scars. You build a hideous minimall or start a coup or try to become a rock star and you think, “They’ll remember me now,” but (a) they don’t remember you, and (b) all you leave behind are more scars. Your coup becomes a dictatorship. Your minimall becomes a lesion. Hazel is different. She walks lightly, old man. She walks lightly upon the earth. Hazel knows the truth: We’re as likely to hurt the universe as we are to help it, and we’re not likely to do either. People will say it’s sad that she leaves a lesser scar, that fewer remember her, that she was loved deeply but not widely. But it’s not sad, Van Houten. It’s triumphant. It’s heroic. Isn’t that the real heroism? The real heroes anyway aren’t the people doing things; the real heroes are the people NOTICING things, paying attention. The guy who invented the smallpox vaccine didn’t actually invent anything. He just noticed that people with cowpox didn’t get smallpox.

After my PET scan lit up, I snuck into the ICU and saw her while she was unconscious. I just walked in behind a nurse with a badge and I got to sit next to her for like ten minutes before I got caught. I really thought she was going to die before I could tell her that I was going

to die, too. It was brutal: the incessant mechanized haranguing of intensive care. She had this dark cancer water dripping out of her chest. Eyes closed. Intubated. But her hand was still her hand, still warm and the nails painted this almost black dark blue and I just held her hand and tried to imagine the world without us and for about one second I was a good enough person to hope she died so she would never know that I was going, too. But then I wanted more time so we could fall in love. I got my wish, I suppose. I left my scar.” – The Fault In Our Stars by John Green. 2014©