Where art thou, Suhaimi.

At about midnight on Friday 17 September 2010, my aunt Habibah passed away at the General Hospital Kota Bharu, Kelantan. She was rushed to Tumpat Hospital by ambulance two days earlier from her house in Pengkalan Kubor near Tumpat and fortunately all her grandchildren were at home for the Hari Raya then.

By the following day she was transferred to Kota Bharu General Hospital, though concious but unable to speak and the last I spoke to her grand-daughter, she would go for the CT Scan and the following night she passed away. May ALLAH Bless her soul, Al-Fatihah.

The last time I spoke to her on the phone was several weeks before Ramadhan and she was always enquiring from me about whether I managed to get in touch with her only surviving offspring, my cousin Suhaimi. I was fortunate to meet Suhaimi five years ago in London when I was on my way back from the US and Ireland. He spent more than two hours at the flat where I put up and he listened more on what I had to convey. When I took my flight home, he came to send my wife Nasimah and I at Heathrow. That was the last I saw of him.

All my efforts to trace him since then had failed, because his phone number and even his email account have expired, perhaps he did so deliberately or otherwise, ALLAH only knows. When his father died in an accident, we tried to get in touch with him to no avail. Now his mother's demise, no one could tell him because he went incommunicado.

Suhaimi is a prodigal son but somehow he had strange ways of showing his relationship to his parents and siblings. Being the only son of a two child family, he went to boarding school in Kelantan at an early age. Perhaps that made him rather detached from his parents. When he was in ITM in the seventies, he won one of the top place in the professional accounting qualifications for the region and with that he went to London to continue as a chartered accountant.

It was in 1972 when I went to see him at his 'dig' right on top of the attic, and I told him how his mother would cry if she saw the place he was staying in. But typical of him, he just shrugged it off. When he came back, he managed to secure a good job and the last I knew he was doing his own business, unfortunately he was hit by the financial meltdown in 1997.

He went to become an accountant in the UK when the late Tan Sri Yahya wanted someone whom he could trust to manage the books of Lotus when he took over the Company. Thus I bumped into him in Sussex Gardens in London in 1997 when he was in the doldrums, after the death of Tan Sri Yahya. Again when I met him in 2005, he was a rolling stone, going on one job after another. After sending me a long e-mail when I came back after a few weeks, he was completely off my radar.

Now I wonder where could he be, and true to Auntie Habibah or fondly known as Mak Uda to all her nephews and nieces, she would not be able to meet him, after I told her that Suhaimi might not come back even after 5 years time, and that was when I told her in 2005. May ALLAH place her soul amongst the chosen few and open Suhaimi's heart to contact any one of his nephew and nieces who are the only surviving members of his immediate family.

Aidulfitri 2010

The picture is taken impromptu, unlike previous years where the family gatherings must end up with a family picture at my late father-in-law's house in Section 11, Petaling Jaya, except for last year it was at my house in SS3/94 in Kelana Jaya.

As such there were many absentees, and it cannot be helped because each family have commitments to attend too. But one thing that is different this time, the gathering is in Kota Damansara, my sister-in-law's house which is a newly occupied residence when she moved early this year from her rented place in Mutiara Damansara. To make it more memorable the late afternoon thunderstorm was so heavy that it looked like another flash flood would have occurred in many areas in Klang Valley.Fortunately being Hari Raya, I did not come across any news of such occurrence.

This Hari Raya I have my father and sister with me at SS3 because he had just been discharged from Hospital Tuanku Jaafar, Seremban after being admitted on the 17 August at 3.00 am and I had to go to and fro PJ-Seremban to help my sister going up the steep slope of that unfriendly hospital. He can continue to recuperate here, for he badly requires the rest as he is still not back to his normal strength.

Yesterday, 12 September 2010 I have to bring him to the nearest private hospital, The Kelana Jaya Medical Centre because he complained of acute pain due to his stricture of the urinary passage of which he has been under treatment at Ampang Puteri Hospital for the past year. The urology clinic in Ampang is not opened until this friday, so I have to find an alternative and he is given a dose of pain-killer and antibiotics. The good thing is that, the doctor who is on duty told me that the regime which Seremban Hospital gives for the insulin jabs is not appropriate and so he changed the type which has two-in-one function. It is only recently that he has become insulin dependent, since his hospitalisation in Seremban. So I have to make sure that the dosage is correct and this morning I went to KJMC once more to confirm the dosage since he introduced a new prescription of insulin. Well it looked like my hospital trips is the feature of my Ramadhan 1431 Hijri as well as Aidulfitri 1431 Hijri. Alhamdulillah!