Die well is our parting message to our ailing parent

Die well is our parting message to our ailing parent

Santi W.E. Soekanto and Winahyo Soekanto, Contributors, Jakarta

One of the country's top neurologists recounted an off-color,
even lame, joke about the Marriott bombing and the elderly woman,
Mak Erot, who has made a name helping impotent and other
"sexually challenged" men regain their virility to our 73-year-
old father.

Two days earlier, we suddenly noticed that Bapak's right eye
could not close and the right side of his face sagged, causing
his mouth to seem to engage in a lopsided grin.

"It's stroke," the doctor decreed, giving us an earfull for
neglecting our father's health and letting his high blood
pressure to go unchecked for so long. Sorry, sorry, excuse us,
doctor, we had been preoccupied these past months by our mother's
deteriorating health due to her lung cancer.

Bapak stared at the doctor, his left eye blinked rapidly in
confusion while the right one remained open and inert. "I didn't
get it," he struggled to form his words. "Who is Mak Erot?"

We would have dropped dead had he shown any signs of
comprehension. The effects of stroke on his intellect
notwithstanding, that was simply not the kind of jokes that we
associated with our father -- an author of dozens of children
books, whose name will always be forever linked with the famed
kid magazine Si Kuntjung of the 1960s and 1970s, and a
storyteller to thousands of children.

Last August the Jakarta Arts Council honored him for his
lifelong dedication to children literary in a simple ceremony
where he was surrounded by the people that he loves the most --
children.

The neurologist laughed, apparently enjoying his own joke, and
looked at us. So of course we helped our father out, explaining
what it was all about. Then, our father struggled to laugh.

"Ooh, I get it now."

We struggled not to weep, witnessing a man of loving words and
stories who now finds it difficult to speak without a slur.
Instead, we talk about death to Bapak.

"There is no link whatsoever between death and sickness," we
urged him to believe. "Millions of otherwise perfectly healthy
people die from no apparent cause, while millions of sick people
live on. You could very well outlive us."

"Right on," the doctor said. "You can still be productive, you
can go on writing because you can still speak. Just tell any of
the children to write the stories down for you."

"I can?" Bapak asked with hope in his voice.

"Yes!" we cried to the man who completed his latest book,
Wahai Kekasih Allah (O, the Beloved of Allah), a biography of
Prophet Muhammad written for children, when he was 70, in ill
health and thinking that he would soon die.

"Three years ago you said you were all prepared to die, but
you haven't, thank God, so who's to say you're going to kick off
this time around?"

We were not out to deceive Bapak that death was not around the
corner for a man his age. Death is around the corner for everyone
of us. We gave him a new book called Manajemen Kematian (the
management of death), telling him that everybody needs to prepare
and not be caught unaware. We gave several other books, all about
reflection of life and death.

Afterwards, everything became a dress rehearsal for death for
Bapak and for us. As soon as he was wheeled out of the huge
cylinder that is the Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) machine for
a brain scan, he told one of us, "It was like being in the grave
in there, alone. The machine made such a noise, but it was like I
was dead."

"That's as good a practice as any," we told him. "Besides,
years ago, you said you wanted to die prepared, you wanted to be
clean and have taken your wudu so no one would need to bother and
bathe your body."

"I said that?"

"Yes. Later, you said you wanted to die together with Ibu," we
said. "The only way to do it is for you and Ibu to be healthy
again and go to hajj, and die together there. We kids would not
need bother about bathing and giving you a funeral then."

We refused hospitalization and opted to bring him home because
Bapak thought he would never, ever feel any peace of mind away
from Ibu, his wife of 47 years. Indeed, the first thing that he
did upon entering the house was to approach Ibu who was sitting
on the floor.

"Come, come closer Ibu, I want to hug and kiss you," Bapak
said, hiswords slurred.

Ibu averted her face and regarded him.

"Now, now, what is this all about?" was the peppery answer of
the woman who reserves any public display of affection only for
children, for whom she, too, has written dozens of books. We know
Ibu loves Bapak, and he her, but God forbid we children should
witness any evidence of it in their daily encounters where
discussions on pains and aches predominate now.

"I want your forgiveness for my every mistake," Bapak tried.

"Well, now, I have made mistakes, too," Ibu retorted.

Bapak looked at her helplessly -- maybe in disappointment as
chances for an exchanging of loving words seemed to have flown
out of the window.

"Well, yes. Now let me tell you about Mariott and Mak Erot."

"Surround your children with books," is one of Bapak's
favorite sayings. Soekanto S.A. started writing for children in
1956, studying and collecting children's literature over the
years; at one point he had a house built to specially store his
collection of children books from various countries.

He went as far as Japan, England and Norway to take part in
seminars and story-telling sessions. He wrote almost non-stop in
the 1960s and 1970s, foregoing sleep for countless nights, to
fill up Si Kuncung magazine with hundreds of stories using
various pen names.

He believes that chidren's books are art, though subtler and
more essential in nature than works for adults because of the
various limitations that need to be respected. Those constraints,
however, force writers to be more creative.

"Writers must convey the results of their exploration of life
in a beautiful way but with certain limitations so that only the
essential part of the story reaches the children," he said when
accepting the Jakarta Arts Council award in conjunction with the
2003 National Children Day.

"Only then can books become the intellectual nourishment and
aesthetic stimulation their readers need," he said.

He is fortunate to have found in Surtiningsih W.T. the ideal
wife because Ibu shared his conviction in the importance of good
books for children. "I chose Bapak not because he was rich or
good looking, plenty of rich men with better looks were out there
seeking to court me then," she said wryly. "I accepted him
because he was nearly as intelligent as I was, and because of his
kind heart. He shared my vision of the kind of offspring that we
should rear."

Over the years, Soekanto produced titles such as Orang-orang
Tercinta (1971), Suka dan Duka (1971), Matahari Jakarta (1973)
and Perjalanan Bersahaja (1980), while Surti produced such titles
as Si Mulus (1972) and Empat Kuntum Melati (1973). One title they
co-wrote was "Persahabatan" (1972) -- only because Ibu had to go
into labor and needed Bapak to finish her work.

Their married life coincides with their journey into the world
of children literature, prompted by the flood of porn and vulgar
comic books from abroad in the 1950s.

"The vista seems not to have changed today, does it?" Ibu once
said, "What with pornographic VCDs and Internet and television
programs."

It has never been an easy life for them, with the hardship and
poverty associated with the writing profession being the most
prominent scourge since we were very young. But they managed to
see six of their seven children graduate from state-run
universities and choose professions as writers and journalists
and teachers.

"You could all have grown up to be good-for-nothing brats had
we been rich all along," Ibu once said. "You could have been
tempted by the good life and fallen into drugs or whatever."

Bapak said, "So I suppose we must be thankful that we are
poor."

"Oh, go on, you are just miskin tapi sombong (poor but proud)
parents," one of us retorted.

Seriously, though, another thing that we are thankful of is,
despite their poor health, that our parents have brought us up to
be Muslim and ensured that we live well -- meaning, plenty of
tender loving care and cooperation among siblings, plenty of hard
work and play, and plenty of sessions where they hammered into
our skulls the fear of Allah.

Now we want them to die well. To die while remaining
productive and being among books (even during her worst bouts of
pain, Ibu still challenges her brain with Agatha Christie's
"whodunnits"). To die in the warmth of the compassion of God --
that in the only death worth striving for.