"I am crying not because I have lost him. I am crying because of the overwhelming guilt of feeling completely useless to him as family, especially during the darkest days of his sickness."
These were the exact words I found myself repeating to the relatives, neighbors, and friends who came to the funeral home (rumah duka). They stood around the casket where my cousin’s body was laid in state (disemayamkan), offering their condolences before he was finally taken to his resting place and buried this afternoon at around 10:00 AM.
This is not a fictional story; it is my real, lived experience. I am choosing to share this deeply painful chapter of my life not to publicly expose my family’s private drama or wash our dirty linen in public. Instead, I write this as a stark lesson and a profound piece of wisdom (hikmah) for all of us. For those of us who, by the grace of God, are still blessed with the opportunity to breathe, live, and walk this earth, let this story be a wake-up call. Let it urge us to become human beings who are more sensitive, observant, and deeply compassionate toward those around us who are vulnerable and helpless.
The story began on a seemingly ordinary Wednesday morning. I was busy getting ready to visit the nearest community health center (Puskesmas) to get a prescription for an aggressive skin allergy I had been suffering from for the past few days. While I was inside preparing to leave, my mother went out to the front of our house to buy vegetables and side dishes from the mobile vendor who passes by our neighborhood every morning.
After paying for her groceries, my aunt (bude), whose house stands right next to ours, approached my mother with a look of heavy concern on her face. She explained that the night before, her son—my other cousin, who works as a catfish vendor—was making a late-night delivery to a buyer. His route happened to take him past the road where a local shelter for individuals with severe mental health challenges is located. While stopped near the facility, he ran into an old friend who lived in the area.
His friend looked at him in surprise and asked, "What are you doing around here so late at night? Did you come to visit your older cousin who is staying inside the shelter?"
My cousin replied, "No, I’m just here to deliver a batch of catfish. Why do you ask? Is there something wrong with my cousin?"
The friend’s face grew serious. "He is critically ill. If you hear news later on that he has passed away, your extended family better not sit around expressing regret."
In an instant, when that story reached our house, it felt as though the entire world had collapsed beneath our feet.
As soon as my aunt’s son had returned home that night, he had told his mother, "It turns out our cousin has been suffering from a severe, life-threatening illness inside that shelter for a long time. It seems like his immediate family hasn't told anyone. Should we inform the rest of the relatives?"
That was the message my aunt passed to my mother by the vegetable cart that morning. Distraught, my mother immediately conveyed the news to the rest of the family. To understand the dynamics, I have two maternal aunts in this neighborhood: one is thankfully still healthy and living next door, while the other passed away almost seven years ago. The sick cousin in the shelter was the son of my late aunt.
To our absolute shock and horror, we quickly discovered that my sick cousin's immediate sibling already knew about his deteriorating health. Yet, they had chosen to stay completely silent. They never uttered a single word to my mother or my living aunt, despite the fact that their houses are only a few steps away from each other. They walked past us every day, carrying a secret that was slowly killing their own brother.
My mother was utterly heartbroken and deeply disappointed. She felt utterly deceived by her own family. How could something so critical be hidden from us?
Refusing to sit idly by, we mobilized. By Wednesday afternoon, a small convoy was ready: myself, my mother, my father, my older brother, and the extended family of my living aunt all prepared to visit my cousin at the shelter.
However, even the act of going to visit a dying relative was marred by ugly human nature. While we were standing outside discussing the logistics of which cars and motorcycles to take so we could all travel together, one of the family members of the sick cousin—specifically, his brother’s wife—suddenly snapped. Aggressive and defensive, she burst out in anger, warning us: "When you get there to visit him, do not dare blame the shelter staff, and do not blame me or my husband!"
For context, my sick cousin is the biological older brother of her husband.
Unable to tolerate this blatant display of defensive guilt, my mother fired back with a stinging slap of reality: "You need to remember that you are just an insider by marriage here. You are an outsider to his bloodline. But that sick man in the shelter is my family. He is the child of my own late sister!"
Stunned and unable to formulate a manipulative response to the raw truth, the woman turned around and walked away in silence.
To cut a long story short, our entire family finally arrived at the shelter after enduring a long, emotionally draining ordeal of interpersonal drama.
Nothing could have prepared us for what we saw. The moment I laid eyes on his condition, the dam broke, and I could not hold back my tears. In fact, our entire family wept bitterly. When he was healthy, this cousin of mine was a robust, tall, and handsome man. But in what felt like a blink of an eye, his physical form had been entirely hollowed out, eaten away from the inside by a merciless illness.
Seeing him in a state where he could barely stand, stumbling and trembling just trying to take a single step forward, the reality of the situation forced his biological brother and sister-in-law to act. Caught red-handed by the extended family, they realized they could no longer hide his condition. Accompanied by my older brother, they finally moved him out of the shelter and rushed him to the hospital.
I still look back on that moment with bitter skepticism. Did they finally take him to get medical custody because they genuinely cared? Or did they do it out of sheer embarrassment and panic because the extended family had unmasked their months of silent neglect? Looking at their pattern of behavior, the first reason—the fear of public shame—makes far more sense.
Before I proceed with how his final days unfolded, I must pause to recount a specific incident that highlights a terrifying lack of human empathy.
On that same Wednesday morning, before the confrontation, the sister-in-law had made a bizarre comment to some neighbors. She had said, "I have this really uneasy feeling in my chest today... could it be that an ambulance is about to arrive at our doorstep?"
I am still brought to a standstill wondering how such sinister words could casually escape the mouth of someone who was supposed to be family. Was that an authentic, subconscious slip of the tongue, or did God explicitly move her lips to speak those words so that the world would see her true heart? It felt as though she wasn't fearing an ambulance; she was eagerly anticipating the death of her husband’s biological brother so that a "burden" would finally be removed from their lives.
How can anyone justify that? Does it make any logical or moral sense? To anyone with a soul, the answer is an absolute no. It is the language of cold, calculated indifference.
By Thursday afternoon, my cousin was formally admitted to the Sragen Regional Hospital (RSUD Sragen). By the grace of God, my older brother was able to drop everything and stay by his bedside. He watched over him constantly, providing the comfort that should have been given months prior, right up until my cousin drew his final breath on Friday night.
In a way, I believe my cousin was simply weary. He was exhausted by a world that had been fundamentally unfair to him from the start. He was a soul destined to be "special," navigating life with severe mental health struggles. Because of his condition, he was placed away in a shelter. His biological younger brother, who worked out of town, had actually returned to the area twice during the three months his brother was critically ill. Yet, despite knowing about the severity of the sickness, the brother never once visited the shelter. He and his wife chose a conspiracy of silence over family responsibility. To make the tragedy sharper, my cousin was an orphan; he had no parents left to fight for him.
Yet, God is entirely merciful. Before my cousin passed away, my older brother witnessed something beautiful. My cousin looked up into the empty room, his eyes bright, as if he were seeing the spirits of his late mother and father waiting for him. He began to clearly speak aloud the full names of our extended family members, one by one.
Hearing that broke my heart, but it also comforted me. Isn't that proof of how deeply he loved us? Despite everything, his mind held onto his family. He didn't leave this world desiring material wealth, money, or fine things. All his soul ever hungered for was the simple warmth, recognition, and physical presence of the people who shared his blood.
If you ask me what occupies my mind today, it is a turbulent storm of profound sorrow, anger, and regret. As his younger cousin, looking back at the 29 years I have been alive on this earth, I am plagued by the thought that I failed to be useful to him. I wasn't able to provide him with moments of pure joy or alleviate his suffering before he was taken from us.
I feel a burning disappointment toward his brother and sister-in-law. If it hadn't been for the random coincidence of my aunt's son passing that shelter and talking to a friend, our cousin would have died in that room completely alone. He would have left this world looking like a man who was entirely destitute and abandoned, a stray soul with no one to claim him.
Yet, amidst the anger, there is a quiet pocket of peace. I am grateful that he passed away calmly. He did not die a nameless statistic; he died with my older brother holding his hand. He closed his eyes knowing that on Wednesday, his aunts, uncles, and cousins had broken through the walls to see him. Even though that reunion lasted a mere three days, those three days gave him the undeniable warmth of a family that loved him unconditionally.
Still, the guilt is a heavy shadow. I cannot shake the haunting realization that for over two months, I was living my life normally—eating good food, sleeping in a comfortable bed, and worrying about minor daily inconveniences—while he was sitting in a facility, enduring agonizing physical trauma completely isolated. Even though my ignorance was a direct result of his brother's deliberate silence, my heart still aches. I find myself wanting to prostrate before his memory and beg for his forgiveness for not being the proactive, protective human being I should have been.
A Final Solace:
I take comfort in knowing he is now in the realm of eternity (alam keabadian). In that place, there is no physical pain, no agonizing diseases, and no bitter taste of being cast aside by the very family who should have stood as his frontline defenders. He no longer has to experience the harsh inequalities of a world that treats people cruelly just because they see reality through a different lens.
Thank you for allowing me to release this heavy burden by listening to my story. Writing this is my therapy. In moments when the guilt threatens to pull me under, I want to look back at these words. I want to remember his quiet resilience, and how God ultimately shattered the hidden malice of people who possessed no empathy.
Let this be a permanent reminder to anyone who reads it: Every single human life is sacred and priceless in the eyes of the Creator, regardless of their mental or physical state.
It is a terrifying truth that individuals who appear flawless on the outside—who present themselves as deeply religious, upstanding, and financially successful—can carry hearts rotten enough to wish for a sibling's death. Conversely, those whom society discards like garbage can become the grandest beacons of pure, unadulterated love. This tragedy has stripped away the illusion and exposed a harsh reality: sharing the same blood does not guarantee sharing the same love.
May we all leave this space with a renewed commitment to be better. On this vast earth created by Allah, let us never lose our capacity to truly humanize one another. Let us see the helpless, speak for the silenced, and love our families without conditions. 🤍
