Folder

In memory of Vindhya Birahmatika Sabnani

(8 December 1984 – 23 May 2017)

It really is difficult to make sense of losses when you’re young, and especially when those who pass are also young. When you’re young, you feel that you’re invincible, you don’t quite grasp the idea of life as temporary.

When I was in high school, I lost a classmate. He was the smartest person I had ever met. For real. He had perfect scores in chemistry, math, and physics at the end of the second term. My teachers were projecting him to take part in the International Physics Olympiad selection. He was taking first year college Physics material while the teacher was teaching us velocity. He was socially awkward and throughout his life he had never taken a public transportation all by himself.

Sometime in March 2002, Jakarta was under big flood and my house was drowned; his too. After taking the Monday off because of the flood, I came to school on Tuesday and noticed that Handadi’s dad was not there with his Vespa when school’s out. The anxious Handadi was walking out of the school gate to the bus stop. We’re going to the same direction, so I talked to him and told him that we should get on the next stop and get down at the same spot. I told him that we would be taking a different bus after this one, but his would be quite easy to spot. He just need to walk about 200 meter across the traffic light.

On Wednesday and Thursday, for some reason I still can’t remember to this day, I didn’t make my way to school. I called a friend Thursday evening to check the things I need to catch up with, she said that there was not much. “We didn’t really have a class today,” she said, “We went to the hospital to visit Handadi. He was in comma.”

The story went that on Wednesday, Handadi took a bus with another classmate, but had no one to get off with together. I guess I didn’t think that he wouldn’t know how to get off of a bus. I can get off from a slightly moving bus, and I thought everyone could. Apparently he couldn’t. Perhaps he was not sure that he was at the right spot to get off, because instead of getting off at the bus stop, he got off at the traffic light, perhaps slightly jumping from the bus that unfortunately started to hit the speed as the traffic light turned green. He fell and hit his head. He was in comma for three days before he left. To this day, I felt my stomach turned whenever I remember this story.

I wasn’t close to Handadi; his absence affected me just as much as we had one empty seat during our final test period the following week, and our inability to solve our physics electromagnetic problems. When we went to his cremation and his dad told me that I needed to continue his son’s path: to be the brilliant one. I didn’t know how to tell him that the previous term I stopped getting good grades in math and physics, that I didn’t think I could live up to his expectation. To this day, I questioned my reasons to not go to school on the day Handadi fell. It’s counter-productive, I know, it’s been years; but the loss is still not palpable. Handadi’s folder are still intact in my Document in one of my hard drives.

–

This week, I lost a good friend. We probably only meet once a year, in the past five years, but I really can tell you the story of that every meet: what we talked about, the feelings, the things we talk, how she looked on those particular moments, and the extra time that we managed to add on top of the event that allowed us to reunite. It’s heartbreaking, and I am heartbroken. Yet, at the same time, her presence had always been physically subtle that I know for sure it wouldn’t affect my life in its entirety accept for her absence in that once a year meet-up, for the talk in the hours added to those events, for regular beautiful snaps of her travel throughout Indonesia in my timeline.

I went to her funeral today, and for the first time shared the moment of her absence with fellow friends. Grief was there, but we laughed at the stupid moments we shared when she was with us. I bid my condolences to the family, but knew that my loss was incomparable to theirs. I know just like it was with Handadi, I would never be able to resolve the grief, that my stomach would always turn when I remember that she’s gone, that I would always come to a halt whenever I think of her, that her folder will always stay.

I don’t mind with any of these consequences. I hope that I treat her memories well. I hope I won’t forget that the folder exists. I know everyone cherishes the part of her that she shared with us. It’s not easy to share a part of your life with another person, yet she had shared hers with many, and being allowed to have a part of her stories – even on those mere subtle meetings – had been an honour.