Good Bye to Johari Hamid -(Joe).

A Cousin on mine I found out had passed away three months ago and he was in the care of a rehab center having been a drug addict and mentally unstable. He was my late uncle's number three in a family of eight children and my uncle was the man who had adopted me upon being born and raised me as his own for twelve years of my life. He was a Buddhist all those twelve years and hence so was I raised as such and he converted to Islam upon marrying a Malay Muslim when in his forties and i was returned to my own family for religious reason, the rest of my family and relatives were Muslims. This story has been told off course time and again to justify why I am and who I turned out to be in terms of religious faith.
But the post is not about me but about my cousin who died quietly or possibly beaten to death by his caretakers as he was prone to violence which is why the rest of his siblings had practically had him sent away in another neighboring state and all but forgotten of his existence. His siblings found out of his death yesterday and he had died on the 10th of October 2019. I had watched him and three others of his siblings grew up as kids and he was a handsome child and lively. He was good in school and very athletic well known as a sprinter in sports among other things. Then something happened to him after he had gone fishing they said and came home 'possessed', it was said he was never the same. He later drifted into drugs and the rest was his fate. I was not around when all these was happening as I had left, migrated to the United States at the age of 25. I learned oh his sad downfall only after I had returned for a visit in the eighties. He was by then lost to the life of the dreamworld of drugs and delusions. His siblings feared him for his constant violence towards them and  he got from bad to worse, being in and out of jail.

Sometime in April- May of 1990  I had returned to Malaysia for a short vacation from the United States and I was having dinner at one of my auntie's home where I was staying about two blocks from where my uncle's house was and a stranger came to the door and told me that my uncle had collapsed by his van at a junction and that  I should take a look. I piggy rode with the stranger to the van an found my uncle laying dead inside the van as someone had carried his body into it. I drove the van home to his house and carried his body into the house. Together with his wife we cleaned him up as he was covered with his own feces from the heart attack he had suffered and the next day had him buried; it was on the First of May, a day etched in my mind forever., a title of a song made famous by the Bee Gees which I could sing and play on the guitar as it reminds me of my uncle's last day.

Later upon my final return to Penang, I found out that my lat uncle's house was being sold for 400 thousand RM and the money split among the children equally and his wife had remarried and had more children. It with his share of the money that my deceased drug addict cousin was sent to the rehab place. In all these I felt hopeless to do much as my cousins had grown into adults and each had their own family to deal with, so I just watched and offered comfort when asked. I grieved for my lat uncle, the man who raised me as I watched his home and family fell apart. I had many doubts an suspicions with regard to how he had been bamboozled by his much younger wife and the man she later married but ti was beyond my place to do anything as I was not much around to count as much. Shit Happens! 

Good bye my unfortunate cousin Joe as we call him and may Allah keep you in a better place as you have suffered more than enough in this miserable life. I sorry than I was not there for you as I too had my own share of crap to carry. We each has our load to carry but yours was much heavier and i hope in the afterlife you will find it lighter. May Allah place you among the believers.