Last Memory

November 8, 1998

 

It has been harder for me too breath. Maybe this is the end of my life? Honestly, I'm satisfied my whole life. And I also feel that this is the right time for me to face the Almighty. My wife retired a few years ago and all of my children are grown and have their own family. I also have beautiful and handsome grandchildren. What else do I not have? I feel like I've had enough of my life here.

 

Speaking of my life, actually I don't know when I was born, but my ID card says I was born June 7, 1928. Yes, it's a fake birthdate, because just a few years after I was born, my parents died. After that I left my house to make money in the city. I was adrift in the city of Medan, which was the largest city on the island of Sumatra at that time; I even went to the island of Borneo to work on ships. That's when I created a fake identity that I ended up using until now.

 

I returned to my hometown in 1960 because I had become a businessman and also wanted to see my older sister who was married and had children. We hadn't seen each other in years and ended up spending our longing for a few days.

 

At that time, I saw a beautiful girl in the village that was busy reading a book. Yes, she is my current wife. She was 17 at the time, and I heard he already had a fiancé. Back then, people didn't marry because they loved each other, but people got married because they were betrothed to each other. My wife was the same. She was engaged, but actually she didn't want to get married quickly because she wanted to go to higher school because of her dream of becoming a teacher. It was extraordinary for a woman in those days.

 

I ended up following the custom in our hometown to be able to snatch her from her fiancé. It was by kidnapping her for a night to my house. You can imagine how chaotic it was because a village girl was kidnapped by an old man. I was around my thirties and she was only seventeen. Ha!

 

We ended up moving to another village and getting married. My wife gave birth to two sons and one daughter. My wife and I both worked, so our children usually stayed at home. But because of the bad gossip from the neighbors, and also because we were worried about the condition of the children who were often left alone at home, we finally decided to move to Jakarta, the capital city of Indonesia.

 

In Jakarta, my business was growing rapidly, and my wife was also able to teach at an elementary school on the outskirts of Jakarta. I could also send my children to college. Fortunately, my children followed their mother’s brain, who loved to study, in contrast to me, who worked on odd jobs and only graduated from elementary school.

 

And here, after more than 70 years of my life, I am lying in a cancer hospital with lung cancer. I guess this is the end of my life. I can only reminisce about the memory of my life for the more than 70 years I have lived.