Every time I wash the dishes, my mind becomes a theater. The water runs, the bubbles rise, and ideas—bright, absurd, profound—start popping into existence. Lately, though, the scenes are quieter. They go like this: my mom eating papaya like nothing’s wrong. My mom laughing at memes after a doctor says her cancer might be back. My mom asking, “Kak, mau mama bikinin apa besok?” as if tomorrow isn’t uncertain.
We recently had that conversation—the one every adult child dreads but knows will come. About death. About what happens after. About what she’d want if, one day, she just… doesn’t wake up. And she, being her, was calm. Steady, like she was talking about what to pack for a trip. No drama, no trembling voice. Just logistics. Just whatever would be easiest for us. She talked like she was a problem to be solved, like minimizing her absence was her final act of care. That’s always been her way—making herself small so no one else has to carry too much.
But later that night, I lay in bed thinking: What else should I be asking?
Not just what do you want us to do when you're gone, but what do you still want to do while you're here?
Are there places you still want to see? Foods you want to eat again? People you’d like to forgive—or be forgiven by?
I realized—I don’t actually know my mother’s favorite memory of being a daughter.
I don’t know the hardest day of her first pregnancy.
Or what song reminds her of falling in love with my father, even after everything he’s done.
I don’t know who she still misses at night.
Or what kind of old woman she hoped to become.
Maybe it’s selfish, but I want those answers.
I want to ask—not for closure, but for connection.
Because when the time does come—and I don’t know when that will be—I want to be able to say: I asked. I listened. I showed up.
But truthfully? I’m still in the thick of it.
Still in therapy, still dissecting wounds I buried deep—some not even mine to begin with.
Still figuring out how to mother myself while loving my own mother.
Some days, the air around me tightens and I can hardly breathe.
Some days, healing feels like drowning in slow motion.
And all the while, the clock ticks.
What I thought was time—abundant, generous, mine—it’s probably running thin.
And maybe that’s why this age—being a woman in her 30s, a wife, a worker, a daughter—hits so hard.
Because now, I wear shoes that fit the version of my mother from decades ago.
Except she already had three children.
Me, my brother, my sister.
And a husband who—well, was there, but mostly in name.
The kind of man who mastered absence while physically present.
Who cheated, repeatedly. Who left her the world to carry everything.
And she did. She carried it all. Still does, in ways I’ll never fully see.
I think about how she used to tremble at night, hands shaking, unsure how the family would survive the next day.
And then she’d rise. Cook. Pack. Prepare us to school. Work. Repeat.
Like love was duty.
Like heartbreak was fuel.
I couldn’t understand it before. But now I’m beginning to.
Now that my own body breaks under far less weight.
Now that I’m trying to hold it all—marriage, healing, ambition, longing—and still feel like I’m splintering quietly.
And yet—she did it. She does it.
And even now, when the fear of her cancer returning hovers like a fog, she eats papaya, laughs at reels, folds my clothes.
I used to think I was afraid of being alone.
But I’m not.
I’m afraid of losing the one person who always showed up.
Who made chaos survivable.
Who always came back—until one day, she won’t.
And maybe this is what the soap bubbles are trying to say—gently, quietly, while I scrub:
You still have time.
You still can pull some effort. You still can ask.
Ask while she's frying tempe and humming a tune from the 80s.
Ask while she folds your laundry when you stay the night like you’re still her little girl.
Ask without needing a reason. Ask even when it's awkward.
Ask even if you’re scared of the answers.
Because somewhere in all this, there’s a part of me still trying to hold on—
while slowly, painfully learning how to let go, just a little.
The water’s still running. The bubbles keep forming.
And maybe this is my cue—not to wait until it’s too late, but to start now.
To ask the small questions over coffee.
To press record on her laugh.
To write down the recipe for her sambal goreng hati.
To say I love you in the middle of an ordinary day—just because I still can.
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