I had to fly back to my home state Sabah on Borneo island on the wee hours of Dec 3 to attend to an urgent family matter. When I reached my parents’ home at about 11.30am along with my two younger brothers and two younger sisters, a huge crowd had already gathered there.
My elder sister and my other brothers and sisters — there are nine of us altogether — were also there. My mom was happy to see us but could not hold back tears. We were happy to see her but could not hold back our tears either.
It had been six months since I last saw my father. The last time I saw him was in June when he and my mother, along with my two sisters and their families, came to Kuala Lumpur for my youngest sister’s graduation. He had stayed with me in my rented home throughout the trip.
At one point of the trip he asked me if I had taken any good pictures of the family, pictures that can be hanged on the wall for remembrance. I told him I had. “Good,” he replied, “print me some copies, will you?”
He often reminded us to keep things as normal as possible when his time had come. That afternoon on Dec 3, things were hardly normal. I cried and cried and cried. Not loudly, just deep inside, but it hurt all the same.
At 5.30pm the burial was over. My father, who was a picture of health 24 hours earlier, is gone. Two days later we were still at the ancestral home. Things had not yet returned to normal but we were coping with the loss.
Taking pictures around the house was the thing I normally do whenever I had the time to visit the house. And since my brother had just bought a Nikon D300, snapping away pictures seemed a normal thing to do. This is one of the very few pictures I had taken using the camera.
I did not really think about the camera setting when I took this picture. I just took it without examining the ISO reading, shutter speed, aperture and so on. And there was a slight drizzle at the time; so weather was gloomy and the picture did not come out brilliant.
