Di Ambang Merdeka

It's almost 10 pm now. I'm sitting in a cafe @Ampang Waterfront with Noris, Ed, Wani & her mother. The four of us are really, really occupied with surfing the Net while MAMA (Wani's mother) is obediently keep us company.

In about 2 hours, Malaysia will be 50 years old and the Government has been preparing for a grand celebration. Millions and millions has been spent and will be spent to ensure that the celebration is a GRAND one!

While others are excitedly rushing to Dataran Merdeka or other celebration points, I'm thinking of copying Rina's plan for Merdeka celebration, which is going to bed early. The princess is already on her bed, preparing herself for a beautiful dream.

I asked a friend of mine this morning, what merdeka means to him. And he gave an interesting answer, "Nothing".

Well, I was not in the mood for a debate so I decided not to probe further. I just stopped there. A few minutes later, a colleague of mine stopped by at my workstation to inform me that the mother of one of our colleagues has passed away this morning after spent a few days in ICU due to a heart attack.

Around 10 am, a group of us got together and went to Subang to pay our respect to the arwah. She has a small family and she lost her father years ago and now she lost her mother. As the eldest, she has to be strong and arranged almost very thing since most of her family members are in Kelantan.

When we arrived at the Subang Jaya (Section 15) mosque, she was in the midst of bathing her mother with the help of bilal perempuan and her assistants. Because there were a small number of male Muslims, my friends and I helped what we could such as lifted the arwah up and placed her on a proper table to be kapaned. Then, lifted the arwah up once again and placed her in the casket and carried her inside the mosque for prayering. Since some of our non Muslim colleagues can't enter the mosque due to unsuitable attire, we decided to go to the cemetery so that they too can pay their last respect to the arwah.

I made a couple of interesting observations. Firstly, I impressed how well a couple of Liza's Chinese relatives paid their last respect according to Islamic teaching. Secondly, I had the opportunity to be in a bilik kapan. Last but not least, it was my first time seeing a jentolak being used @cemetery.

I totally agree with FND that as a muslim we really need to learn all about jenazah, especially people like us, the eldest male in the family, so that we know what to do and how to do it correctly when the time comes. I should include this in my resolution list!

I'm getting tired and I think it's timely for me to sign off. I would like to take this opportunity to wish all Malaysian, "Selamat Hari Merdeka!" And have a productive weekend too.

And Al-fatihah buat arwah.