The Kind of Grief We Never Talk About

I hear my mom praying in the middle of the night. She whispers

“Ya Allah, tolong pinjamkan anakku sedikit lebih lama” I cry quietly after that.

I know I can make peace with whatever happens. I know I can learn to live with it. But not my parents.

They’ve spent their lives standing beside me, carrying me through every hardship, giving me everything they could.

If I die, then I die. But they are the ones who have to live with that wound for the rest of their lives.

People often say that death is hardest for the one who leaves.

I don’t think that’s true. The one who leaves no longer has to wake up the next morning. The ones who stay do.

They are the ones who have to keep living around an absence that quietly becomes part of everyday life.

Sometimes I imagine my mother setting an extra plate on the table before remembering she doesn’t need it anymore. Or my father reaching for his phone because he wants to tell me something, only to realize there is no one on the other end.

It’s strange how grief doesn’t always arrive as tears. Sometimes it arrives as habits with nowhere to go. As love with no place to land.

They spend years teaching us how to survive without them. But no one ever teaches them how to survive without us.

So if you ever wonder why I keep choosing to stay, why I keep trying even on the days when life feels unbearably heavy…

It’s because somewhere, in the middle of the night, my mother is still whispering my name in her prayers.

And somehow, that feels like enough reason to stay.