1000 days of love

You know what day is it today? Yup, Friday. Good boy. Now take this ice cream and off you go. Hahaha..

Ok, ok, I'm in very good mood today coz I celebrated the 1000 days of my married life with my dearest husband. You might think, budak ni mesti takde keje, tiap-tiap hari kira hari ke? Unfortunately the first part of that question is true but the second part is not. It is not that I have a countdown timer in my room counting down how many days that I have been a wife. It was happened unexpectedly actually. I was counting days for other thing and then I put my anniversary date and see how many days already. At that moment, it was day 980 (plus minus). So I thought wow, we almost 1000 days. So I just put a reminder in my phone calendar.

So there you go. 1 0 0 0 d a y s . . . .

My finance professor in Duke counted his marriage days. I remember when he introduced himself, he said something like, "I have a wife and we have been married for xxxxx days." Yeah, he has OCD (obsessive-compulsive disorder). You should see how he put all his money in his wallet. It's according to the serial number okay. But he's really a fun but quirky professor and I enjoyed his lectures even though I still couldn't understand finance whole-heartedly. Haha.

Anyway, celebrating how many days you have been ...... is harder than remembering a certain date. I remember by heart my anniversary date but how many days have been married, that 's more challenging. Because the date can be fall on random date and after a while you stop counting.

So to commemorate this day (which might not be remembered if I didn't accidentally count it), I have made this photo mosaic which consisted of 1000 (+18 more) photos of us from the day we tied the knot until today. Yes, that's 1000 unique photos of us only.

The main picture is Day 1 - our akad nikah

While doing this, I realized:
We have a lot of photos of us alone rather than us together. This couldn't be avoided as we always travel just the two of us. So it's always he took my photo, I took his. Even though we have X-shot Extender and a tripod to help us, sometimes we were lazy to use it. Yup, we travel with 2 kind of tripod (well, one is more like a monopod). Believe it or not, all of that can be put into my handbag. But towards to end, the laziness improved and we have more photos together.

I'm going to print it (in large print obviously) and framed it after I perfect the mosaic. Kind of neat kan...

Ps: Actually I wanted to be a surprise gift for my hubby, but I am very bad at keeping secret and spilled my plan to him. He thought it was a cool idea. I will post the final product when I finish it, print it and frame it.

After 3 years of battle

If I'm not mistaken, I first meet her in 2004. It was Zainal's UNITEN convocation. At that time, I came as a shy-shy girlfriend celebrating his boyfriend's achievement. I was invited to join their family lunch after that. I was reluctant at first (coz I was shy) but eventually I followed them.

After that I never met her again until few years later. She went to Germany pursuing her Ph.D after that. Then in 2007, Zainal showed me the email that she send informing that she would be back for good after she was diagnosed with breast cancer stage 3. At this point of life, you don't care about pencapaian duniawi anymore when your life was at stake. And that was the beginning of her battle.

In 2008 after we got married, we always visited her, at least 2-3 months once. She had mastectomy, chemotherapy and many more treatments. But the cancer cells were very stubborn. After the mastectomy, we thought that the cells were gone, but then we found out it had spread to lung before to the bones.

When I was in US, I saw the worried look of my husband whenever he called home, scared that he wasn't going to be there if anything happened to his only sister. I prayed hard that Kak Zura stays stronger and wait for our arrival first.

But Kak Zura was a strong woman and also a smart lady. Not only academically (bachelors in US, masters is Malaysia and Ph.D in Germany), but also in life. She knew not to depend on man to make her happy and started to save everything for her daughters. If you met her, you will not see her as a patient. She always smiling, never complaining and always want to do everything by herself.

Only Allah know what's best for His creation. This Raya was actually the first Raya I celebrated with her, well, I never know it would be the last Raya. She was weak already at that time but as usual I never noticed it. A week after that we went to visit her again at her house after hearing that she always had difficulty of breathing. We couldn't talk much that time as her friends were there at the same time. My mother in law told me that the doctor had told her that she had only 1 month left. The cancer cells have invaded her liver and the spinal cord. I was in shock. I couldn't imagine how she felt at that moment.

On Thursday afternoon that same week, I received a phone call from Zainal that Kak Zura was admitted to hospital. Same hospital with Pak. He rushed home and together we went there. They gave Kak Zura morphine and other pain reliever to ease her pain. Yes, the doctor said cancer is the worst pain in the world. Because of the pain killer, she was able to sleep. Zainal slept there for 2 nights and I joined him on the second night. Whenever she woke up and usually the drug has toned down, we need to call nurse so that they will give new dose of drug.

On Sunday morning, we left her sleeping and went home. Zainal's brother took care of her in daytime. We would never know that it would be her last day. We came back again around 8.30pm the same day. We saw her husband sleeping in the room (finally he arrived on SUNDAY!). We went to Kak Zura and saw that she was breathing heavily and moaning in her sleep. After updating her husband on her condition and asked him to take his dinner while we waited with Kak Zura, we went to nurse station. We asked the nurse there why she was breathing like that. It wasn't like that this morning. The nurse answered short and simple, that's is how orang nazak breathing. At this moment she asked us to start reciting Yaasin and teach her the syahadah.

After that shocking piece of news, we immediately started reciting Yaasin. Zainal's brother and his wife, Kak Ina arrived after that. Since both of them are medical doctors, they knew what's the situation and started reciting Yaasin. Kak Ina checked Kak Zura medical reports and found out that her blood pressure couldn't be determined anymore and her temperature was subnormal. Kak Zura's husband came back from his dinner looking confused and joined us in reciting Yaasin.

At 10 pm, with her husband and Zainal holding her hand, she breathed her last breathe. It was fast and almost like she was sleeping. Panic, both of them called Kak Ina and she checked her pulse and heart beat. She called nurse who came with defibrillator. Kak Ina requested not to use the defib and the nurse just used it to read her heart beat and confirmed her death. It's only straight line printed on that paper. At that time, the time of death recorded was 10.03pm on 26 September 2010.

The rest they said is history. We did what we supposed to do and she laid in her final resting area in Shah Alam. She left 2 beautiful daughters aged 8 and 5. I hope she was placed amongst the specials and hope she is peaceful in her new place.

Dari Allah kita datang, kepada Allah kita kembali jua. Al-Fatihah kepada Kak Zura....

Kak Zura with her daughters on our wedding day. At the back is Zainal's brother.