Reflection On Family Values

Courtesy of www.stradavinonobile.it

22 June 2019

Back in the craziest city in the world, Jakarta after the whole drama surrounding Eid, one of the most intense times in Indonesia or in any Muslim country in the world for that matter.  

Spending 18 days home with mom and dad for the Eid has presented a lot of food thoughts for me to chew.

Mom fell sick on the 2nd day of Eid. Though, days before she actually fell very sick I could already see it coming. Her facial expression before the sickness can't really hide it. She was pale. It was written all over her face.

When I say very sick, it's when she could not get out of bed and just stay there quiet. This gives me a lot discomfort. My mom is a Trojan mom. She would not let you unoccupied. She would ask to do this and that, fix this and that. Sometimes I resent it, but that's how a kid is, right? It's in no way that I hate my mother just because she orders me around. It's the opposite. When she stops ordering me around when I am home, that's when I am worried.

And my mom is very active, too. If she is not that sick she would do anything around the house. Only when she is very sick that she would just lay on bed.

As someone who pays a lot of attention to health, I do not want my mom to just let this happen. She went to several doctors before when this kind of thing happened but that's about it. All the doctors said that she has GERD that is, I quote, "gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) is a long-term condition where acid from the stomach comes up into the esophagus." Since the gas is all over the stomach it hits to the point where gas also rises up to the breathing system and causes a difficulty in breathing. This happens a lot to my mom far even before I go to Middle School.

Not willing this to repeat itself I took my mom to the hospital and had her lung and stomach checked. Normally this would be a put-off  to my mom but since I insisted she just followed a long. And the check-up showed that's really the problem.

Anyway, I wasn't gonna talk about the illnesses because I don't really know them much. I only know what I read and heard. So now, what I really want to raise a conversation about is on family values and how it shifts overtime.

In Gayonese culture, parents are meant to be taken care of by their kids when they get older. But it seems to have been different in parents case. We are a family of four. Three of my brothers got married, that makes me the only person who is not. And the three of them live in their own separate houses.

The question I have in the back of my head is who will care for them. Maybe now they still manage to care for themselves but when age takes away their ability to do so, who will? I would love to be the one who cares for them. But I don't see myself moving back home. I am worried that both of them will not be okay with the idea of moving city and live with me either.

It's a dilemma and the fact that we don't have the culture of taking this kind of thing to the table and talk it through makes it even more difficult.

I love both of my parents and I want them to be well cared in their old days. That's why I will keep this question in my head and see what kind of solution possible to mitigate this.