Raya came Calling

It was not going to be the same compared to the previous year. Ba was no longer with us. We spent the evening before at my Mum’s place at Bukit Antarabangsa welcoming some neighbours dropping by for takbir after the Isya’ prayers.

I woke up early on the Raya morning, and it was raining heavily outside, cancelling my plans to visit Ba’s grave. The prayers came after that, also at Bukit Antarabangsa. Ba usually manned the Zakat desk. Since he was no longer around, the Imam was there in his place. I took some time talking to him and everybody mentioned that they missed Ba especially during Ramadan when Ba helped to manage some of the Surau events.

Prayers and then a short tahlil. We were off after that.

More food at Mum’s followed by the obligatory photos. I then set off to Gombak to join Anita’s parents before setting off for my long drive to Kota Bharu after noon.

40 Days

Last weekend Two weekends ago, Julia hosted a kenduri at her place. We had a prayer and Yassin recital to mark 40 days of Ba's passing. We got some of my Uncles and family friends around as well.

Nut sadly since it was a Saturday afternoon, I was late for the occasion. Anita and the boys were there and we later spend the evening in Kajang.

It was nice that so many people came. It was also the last weekend before Ramadan. It had been some time since I have been to Ba's grave. It now time to decide on the tombstone and in the coming weeks, I would be sorting that out.

Alfatihah.

The Weeks After

A couple of weeks had passed since Ba left us. We were still getting ourselves organised in terms of sorting out his paperworks. I had planned to do some paperwork with my Mum next Thursday which should take me the whole afternoon.

All of us were still recovering from the shock of the loss, but were gradually coming to terms. My Mum had been staying with Julia in the past week and I planned to bring her to our apartment in a couple of days. We have yet to decide on our long-term plans. There were a few ideas floated, but we had decided to do a bit of renovation again to our apartment to create a guess room at the expense of my study.

Plenty of our relatives had visited my Mum either at her place or at Julia's. She seemed OK but I was sure come Ramadhan, when she was active at her surau with Ba, she might miss him. At the moment she remained occupied.

The Formalities

First things first, the most important document that I had to get after Ba's passing was his death certificate. I found out that the best place to get this sorted out quickly was the Jabatan Pendaftaran Negara's office near the Masjid Wilayah.

Parking was a nightmare and I ended up leaving the car by the roadside, making my way to the office complex on foot. Once there though, everything was smooth. All I needed was the burial permit, my Dad's MyKAD and a copy of my MyKAD. No form to fill and I was done within 15minutes.

The staffs were also very polite and they had a separate office for application of Death Certificate, away from the main queue.

I must commend the JPN for their effort. It certainly made the process that much easier especially during this trying times ...

Back to the Old Routine

After the time off and conference leave, it was now back to work proper. In the middle of a long weekend - Monday was a public holiday for the installation of the Agung - I was on call on the Sunday. I was at Julia's place with my Mum the day before and the day after the call of course.

Despite being a long weekend, the call was surprisingly busy. Managed some sleep though as well as the first half of the United match. By the time I was ready to go to bed, the Barca - Real match kicked off. I was too tired to watch though.

At least I had Monday to rest before starting the week. Another long weekend coming right ahead but I had another call later in the week.

I was also scheduled to be in Singapore for a meeting next week, before returning to give a couple of talks the weekend after ...

It was always good to get back into the swing of things.