Grief is powerful beyond belief. I have spent sixteen years thinking of my mother as a ghostless figure, nostalgic for a memory I can’t remember. She passed away when I was 3. She had me and what she was shaking hands with: cervical cancer. Levitating through the darkest of times, I figured that I have never really thought about her, or sitting in front of our display of her photos and take a moment of remembering. I think everything about her is the question of the ages.
You are not an Indonesian descendant if you haven’t heard of Malin Kundang. Malin is a young man raised by his single mother. He grows up being a successful skipper of a nobility class. However, he forget about where he comes from, and inevitably his mother. She thunderously curses him into a rock; a road-block to the boats working under his supervision, delivering golds. It is like a Phoenix’s death as it burns to ashes, and only a mother’s tear can tender the magic of love. Now that I grow up without any slight view of a mother figure, I have a fear that lingers: What if a spot in my heart hardens like a rock as the time goes by? My name is Syahna. It is a thoughtfully given name by my mother. If you travel through Arhamaic beginnings, it means The Deep Sea. It also means Freedom in Navajo, Beautiful in Yiddish, and The Celestial Red Rose in Mongolia. I have, or had, not spoken any conversation I remember with her. I couldn’t speak a single language when she was there. She was not my home. This name I obtain was the only inheritance at one point. Years pass, and I’ve only known her from stories. I own an unique relationship with my mother where things escalate from different perspectives and I always have had to ponder which is true and which is not.
0 Comments
|