How much price are you willing to pay to let your life go on?

(my first article published on medium.com. The date was Feb 10, 2016)

How can you possibly let go of the past? How much effort do you give? How much price are you willing to pay?

It was a cold January when I first realized that everything that I had could be gone in just seconds. A father that I loved the most, a caring family man, my greatest hero in the world (just can be compared with Batman, maybe), had passed away. I remembered having a conversation with him by phone just a day before, talking about my graduation ceremony in the next month.

No, I didn’t cry when I heard the news that he’d been brought to the hospital after getting hit-and-run accident. I still could stand on my feet and finished my graduation requirements and necessary administrations in the college in the morning before going home. When I got on the bus that evening, I still couldn’t imagine that I would lose him the day after. I meant, it was only accident that many people had and they were okay. After seeing him laid on the bed with closed-eyes, I felt furious, blaming the awful person that left him behind after the accident. Maybe my father was in the fault for crossing the road without noticing, or maybe not. But could you, as a human being, just left someone in the middle of the road, covered with blood?

But the thing I hated the most was… the world was still going on as always, with or without my father in it.

Then after days of doing nothing productive except receiving a lot of guests at home giving their condolences to my family, I decided to move on. I packed my things and just two weeks after the funeral, I got on the train that brought me to Jakarta. I found things that could help me forgeting the pain in the heart and the sadness of losing someone precious. And I succeed.

But my mother didn’t. The next time I went home, mother said that she had the plan to get our house renovated. She wanted everything in the house to be placed the opposite position. The bedroom in the right would have to be moved to the left, the front door in the left side needed to be in the right, and so almost everything else in our house. I couldn’t understand since our house was just fine and nothing really needed to be changed. It was just a waste of money, energy, and time. She said it was for space efficiency. I couldn’t understand. I couldn’t.

I still didn’t agree to the plan she had, until my brother told me what he saw one day: mother took out father’s clothes and put it on the boxes in the early morning just for putting them back again in the cupboard while shedding tears in the middle of the night. She didn’t have the heart to throw them away. By the time brother told me, I knew: the house renovation plan was never about the efficiency. It was the only thing she could think of to redeem her longing for her husband.

Maybe a year is not enough to bring her heart back in shape, even though she does the daily life as fine as usual. My house is in the middle of being renovated right know. Everyday is a busy day with people coming and going visiting our house to see the renovation process. I know, and she knows too, the house being renovated will not be a guarantee to let the past gone.

I think about it almost everyday while making coffee for the workers, hanging out with my childhood friends, having conversation with my siblings: do we really need to go this far to get our heart back in shape? Why can I let it go this easily, while my mother can’t? Is it because the amount of love we have different and hers is bigger than mine? Or is it about the difference of the amount of the time we spent together?

Then I know. I am looking at the old photo album consisted our family members’s photos. There aren’t many photos of the family members and none of them consisted five of us together. We don’t have a family photo. One day we ever planned about going to photo studio to take one, but the plan was canceled because we fought each other in the morning because of usual, small cause and the mood was ruined. We promised to do it next time. Next time. And next time again. As we thought the time would always be ours.

That family photo, in the end, will never exist. And by the time I realize, I know, actually I never get over with the past. I just ran away and chose not to think. I avoid any thought about my father and close my ears everytime people talk about family. I pretend to be okay and always in shape. In the end, I’m just like my mother that can’t let it go. Even worse, because I don’t do anything for the wound to be healed, for the hole to be filled.

Mother faces it head on, willing to pay the high price of money in order to get a lighter step every time entering our house.

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This is my first article on Medium. I am currently working on improving my skill in storytelling. I hope you can get a lesson from it and even if you can’t, I hope you enjoy the story. Connect with me on twitter @quranisa