I hate hospital.

Its smell in particular. The sterile smell I can stand. But there are other smells, too; hope, fear, sadness, grief.

I despise them.

As I walked along those long alleys, I couldn’t kept the smells of trauma away from my head. It has been months. It feels like yesterday and forever.

My aunty was sitting on her bed, in a room for two patients. I couldn’t recognize her. She has lost so much weight, she must be around 30 kg or so now. Her hair is all white, and she looks much older.

The resemblance of siblings struck me. She is the elder sister of my late dad. She is one of the two left from all the siblings. I was like seeing  my dad when he was in his worst condition. Sitting helplessly, almost couldn’t breathe, couldn’t talk. Her eyes were the only part of her body that talk about her pain. She was finishing her supper, if you can call a few bytes as ‘finishing’.

I kissed her hand and imagining kissing my dad’s.

She is not okay. There was nothing I could do more to help.

But praying.

I had lunch with my boss this afternoon. During the ngalor ngidul conversation, I told him I can never finish Murakami’s Norwegian Wood, because I started reading it in the hospital when I was accompanying my dad. He told me that he can never have ‘mari gosong’ cake again in his life, because that was the last thing his mom gave her before she passed away.

If you never lost someone dearly, you might not understand that the grief will never go like trashing unused files in the trash bin.

It stays.

Sometimes it hides in your deepest memory when you go on living like you suppose to.

But it rises in the most unexpected moments from time to time.

*sending my dad in heaven hugs and kisses*