Bomb victim's daughter faces untreated leukemia

Theresia Sufa, The Jakarta Post, Bogor

One morning, Frida Charlota Sopacua said to her 16-year-old daughter, Yunita, "Nita, get dressed will you, and take this Rp 2,000 (23 U.S. cents) allowance from your daddy. Don't take too long or you'll be late for school!"

Disturbed by her mother's words, Nita said, "Mom, please, you know that daddy is gone. Remember? Yesterday, you went to the cemetery to bury him. Please don't talk as though he is still with us."

It was not easy for Frida, 48, to accept that she had lost her husband, Johanes Boelan, 50, in the JW Marriott blast last Tuesday, and that she had just buried him on Thursday.

In the morning before the funeral, when Boelan's body was laid out at home, Frida had woken up early as usual to prepare lunch for her husband.

Family members, relatives and neighbors who had gathered at Boelan's house in Selawi, Tanah Baru, Bogor, fell into an awkward silence, for no one knew what to say.

Later, Frida told The Jakarta Post that she eventually realized that her husband was truly gone.

"But when night falls, I can't help but feel that he is on his way home from work," she said.

Dealing with her husband's passing is hard for Frida and her five children Paula, 27, Michael, 23, the twins Christina and Yohana, 21, and the youngest, Yunita.

They were shocked to hear an allegation by the police that Boelan was the suicide bomber in the Marriott blast.

Enraged, Boelan's brother-in-law Jimmy Sampelan demanded National Police chief Gen. Da'i Bachtiar to clarify the police's allegation.

"If the police do not clarify the statement, we will sue the national police chief. The statement has shocked the victim's elderly mother, Poppy Boelan, who lives in Kupang, East Nusa Tenggara," he said.

Michael, Boelan and Frida's only son, said that his father was an honest, calm and patient man, so it was impossible that he could ever have become a terrorist.

"If people really believed that Daddy was a terrorist, we (his children) would be ostracized. Thank God the allegation is false," he said.

To his children, Boelan was a beloved father figure. He never got angry, nor did he ever yell at his children. Christina said that every Saturday and Sunday, her father always cooked for the whole family, saying that it was his way of repaying for lost time.

Boelan had worked as a driver for ING Life Insurance for 28 years until last year, when he began working for Kitty Yu Kway Ngar's family as a private driver.

He was killed in the Marriott bombing as he pulled up at the front of the hotel to pick up his employer, who was having a business lunch at the hotel's Sailendra Restaurant.

Frida's sister, Ade, said Boelan had complained a couple of months ago that he was underpaid.

However, he kept at his job because he needed the money to buy milk for his 4-year-old granddaughter Sindy, Paula's child, and to pay for Nita's school fees and medication.

Nita's tuition of Rp 400,000 per month has not been paid for several months now. But the tuition is nothing next to her leukemia treatment, which costs at least Rp 800,000 every week.

Now that the family has lost its sole breadwinner, Frida is at a loss as to how she will finance Nita's education and treatment.

Consoling her mother, Nita said, "It's OK, Mom. If I'm going to die, just let it be. Everybody dies eventually."