It’s been months since the wedding.
People still ask how married life is.
I say something vague and polite. “Alhamdulillah.” “Learning a lot.”
Sometimes I joke, “We got married in the middle of a pandemic, so that’s fun.”
But I never tell them the truth.
That I didn’t really feel like a bride.
That I still don’t really feel like somebody's wife.
It was early December last year when I took a leave from work to go to the KUA—fill forms, book the penghulu, do the supposedly exciting premarital errands. My mom had been bleeding for weeks, went along with me to KUA. She has been drastically losing weight. That same day, we went to an obgyn right after the KUA.
The obgyn checked her, then asked to speak to me. Alone.
What kind of cruelty is that?
Of course my mom knew.
The way silence sits in a room can be louder than any diagnosis.
She was referred to a bigger hospital. Between the bill and the biopsy, the car rides became quieter, and the tears found their way into forced conversations about anything else. I remember telling her—softly, and stupidly—that the doctor suspected cancer.
Stage 4A, we would soon learn.
The kind of sentence that leaves no space for air.
The dread that makes you say: “It’s okay, Ma. Insya Allah gapapa, kita coba jalanin ya,”
while silently thinking: Ya Allah, please don’t take her just yet.
I told my dad. He did what he always does: nothing useful.
Present, but not really.
The days between were blurry. I was preparing to get married. I was also preparing to watch my mother fade.
And I did both badly.
I had so many arguments with my then-boyfriend, to an extend I didn't mind to call it off for good. I wasn’t excited about the wedding—how could I be?
My brain was filled with white noise. My heart was a thousand miles away, sitting next to my mother in a hospital corridor, watching her shrink into sickness.
But when Mama asked something, I said yes.
Every time.
Yes, Ma.
Yes.
Pengajian sebelum nikahan, yes. Additional siraman yes. Another set of kebaya for akad and reception, yes.
Maybe it was guilt. Maybe pride. Maybe the desperate little girl in me who still believed she could earn love, deserve it, if only she performed well enough.
Anything to make her happy.
Anything to give her something else to think about besides dying.
I think some part of me believed that if I made her proud, it would somehow buy us time.
I was wrong, of course.
But grief makes you transactional sometimes.
My sister became the caretaker, a very handy and caring one.
I became the emotional escape artist. The supporting role. The one who found words when silence got too heavy, but couldn’t sit still long enough to be truly helpful.
I hated myself for that.
I still do, some days.
At the wedding, I wore a beautiful kebaya, smiled at cameras, shook hundreds of hands, and said thank you more times than I can count.
I also cried in a bathroom because Mama was starting treatment the next week.
People say weddings are the happiest day of your life.
They weren’t lying.
They just weren’t talking about mine.
I barely remember the day.
I know it happened. I have the pictures. People say I looked glowing.
But my memories are like a badly edited movie: jump cuts, disjointed scenes, no soundtrack.
I remember fitting my kebaya while swallowing tears.
I remember nothing else.
And then came the nights.
The ones nobody saw.
Every night, she died a little.
That’s what it felt like.
The pain was relentless. No meds helped.
She would cry out, call God, say things people say when they’re already touching the veil.
Things you don’t forget, even when you try.
The sounds she made... they're still around.
And when morning came, she didn’t rest because she felt better.
She rested because her body had surrendered.
She couldn’t eat. She vomited almost everything.
We had to keep her hemoglobin above 10 to keep the treatment going.
We were feeding a body that no longer wanted to stay.
You think you’d get used to watching someone suffer, but you don’t.
It chips away at you. Quietly, cruelly, every single day.
And now, months later, I’m still here.
Married.
Alive.
Still trying to show up for someone new while grieving someone whose body is still here—but barely.
I keep thinking I’ll write about it properly one day.
Maybe this is that day.
Or maybe I’m just writing to remember that it was real.
That it happened.
That we survived it—whatever “it” even was.
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