This is all F*cked Up

I am writing this on Friday, April 21st, 2023.

What will follow is my attempt to break down what has happened over the past week and rationalize it all.

Before reading the below, I recommend you read this accompanying piece I wrote about death and the late stages of life, earlier this year.

Last Saturday began with a long awaited move to my new apartment in Brooklyn. After a couple of weeks of preparation, most of which was done by Ariana (thank you!), it was time for the big day. As all moves go, it was not as difficult as anticipated but it was still draining nonetheless.

The day goes on and night falls, and the evening shift at work begins. While I am not as active as others on a match night, I am flipping through our matches and in and out of our app to ensure things are running smoothly and to address any questions that come in from various stakeholders. These questions can range from an individual having issues with entering the streaming service to another stakeholder asking a question about a feature in the service.

(Context: I work for a sports league and one of my responsibilities is to monitor our streaming service on match nights)

Late that evening, there were some issues experienced by users and needless to say, it was extremely stressful. In the middle of all of this, I received a call from my parents back home in Indonesia who informed me that my Oma’s (grandmother) health was declining and that she was headed to the hospital. The work situation, compounded with the bad family news and the exhaustion of the apartment move made for a bad combination, and I had a panic attack.

I remember thinking to myself “this can’t be happening…this must be a bad dream” as I felt a hole burn in my stomach and chest. I am not sure when but I would guess around 2 AM, my body shuts down and I fall asleep.

Sunday morning came and as I woke up from a fog, the events of the past evening crystalize and become clear. None of it was a bad dream. This was a real nightmare and it wasn’t over yet.

My colleagues and I hop on a call to discuss the incident and identify next steps. A couple hours later, I get another update from my family in Indonesia that the situation with Oma is continuing to deteriorate. My mother is in tears on the line and I feel my stomach do jumping jacks.

We discuss and I tell them that I will hop on a flight that evening to get back home as soon as possible. I am not sure what going home means other than being there but I know instinctually that it is the right decision. I am emotionally numb and physically burnt out due to the rollercoaster of the past 24 hours. Between mid-day change in plans and the evening flight now scheduled, I wander around my new apartment and new neighborhood, not quite knowing what to make of these recent developments. What started as a work emergency turned into a life emergency.

I am very thankful for my colleagues, who without hesitation, stated they would handle what was needed at work in my absence and that I should focus on family. While I know that a week or so away from work pales in comparison to the weight of the situation back home, I can’t help but feel some level of guilt for not being with my team while they deal with the aforementioned work incident.

The flight to Jakarta feels quick. I land and find that I have received a voice message from a missed call from an unknown number. It is from the landlord of my old apartment. As of this writing, this situation is still open, but I will summarize it as there being false allegations made against me regarding damage to my previous apartment. Fun! I’ll have to deal with this when I get back to New York but needless to say, this felt like another kick in the gut given everything else that was going on.

I get to the hospital and see Oma and I am not sure what to make of it all. The tubes. The mechanical beeps. The overly sanitized state of the Intensive Care Unit (ICU). With the nurses hustling and bustling, they felt less like people doing their job (thank you for all you do!) and more like cogs in a bigger machine that I can’t quite yet comprehend. Their scrubs all indistinct. Varying shades of blue, green, and purple. Oma looks lifeless. I don’t know what to say or think.

As a matter of fact, at this very moment, I begin to sweat and get uncontrollably nervous. What did I come here for? What do I say? What do I do? Did I really think that my presence would do something? Did I do this all for myself? What the fuck?

My aunt snaps me out of it and suggest that I hold Oma’s hand and speak to her. While she may not open her eyes, she can allegedly still hear us. So I talk and ramble. She squeezes my hand, which gives me more confidence to keep on talking. I tell her about New York, my job, friends, Ariana, and any other subjects I can think of. Anything. She opens here eyes slightly and then more as I continue to talk. She looks at me with some tears in her eyes. I don’t know whether she’s registering anything I am saying but she’s there. With a healthy dose of vanity, I initially interpret this as the standard reaction of a grandparent seeing their grandchild. But as I drone on, I begin to see that these tears represent the struggle in her eyes. She is fighting as hard as she can to stay alive.

The next few visits this week don’t go as well. She is quiet and unresponsive. Comatose.

The ICU has a very open layout. Much more open than I thought would the be case. A couple of the beds are curtained off but the majority are open. While the angle of each patient’s bed prevents them from looking around much, I can see around very clearly. Across from Oma’s bed is a baby. This scene makes me tear up. I can only imagine what tragedy must have befallen that baby for them to be trapped in the ICU. The baby’s eyes dart around the room as it sucks on its pacifier. In all the visits to Oma, I don’t ever see any visitors for the baby. Nor do I see the nurses pay much attention to it. After further observation, perhaps it is in there for precautionary measures and therefore the nurses are all nonplussed about the situation. I hope that is the case.

This is my first interaction with somebody in the state that Oma is in. This unnatural state of being. Teetering between life and death. A state in the human condition that is fostered through the sheer will power of the affected individual to keep on living, supplemented by the advent of modern medicine and technology. She is alive but it’s hard to tell if she is living.

As the week goes on, it becomes apparent that there might not be a way back from here. Perhaps the best avenue is to take Oma home so she can see out the rest of her time with us in the physical world, in the place where she wants to be, surrounded by the family that adores her so dearly.

Prior to this decision being made, my parents and I have a conversation late one evening about everything that has happened. They go back and forth about the situation and the merits of each decision and thought. I listen contently. I know they will eventually ask me what I think and when they do turn to me, I start by saying that I had no idea why I came to Jakarta. I still don’t really know but what has become clear to me in the past few days is that my presence here has been less for Oma and more so for our extended family. I have always viewed myself as a leader in this family so I now believe that my purpose in coming home is to not only support Oma but to also support everyone else.

Oma’s situation has been challenging over the past few years, especially since Opa (grandfather) passed and I have been told that it has been in further decline since the start of this year. Being so far away from home, my family, and Oma, I haven’t had to deal with the consequences of her declining health and state in recent months so I can’t fully comprehend how challenging it has been for everyone to see her go this way while trying to help her and process their own emotions.

So when I think of being a leader here, I don’t think of it as taking the front seat. I think of it as checking in on everyone when they are ready for it. Listening as much as I can. Being there. Providing levity, when appropriate. And just helping us all stick together.

Oh and I forgot to mention that yesterday, I tested positive for COVID! That was another fun curveball. Although, today I have tested negative twice so hopefully we are in the clear. This sequence of testing has led me to suspect that I had COVID for a while now and that the mixture of stress and fatigue made misattribute the symptoms of the disease over the past week or two.

Anyways, today is my last day in Jakarta. I fly back to New York tomorrow. Later today, I will see Oma. I don’t know if it will be the last time but it feels like it. That feels fucked up to say but its the truth. It feels like a twisted version of the Schrödinger's Cat thought experiment. If I don’t fully consider and accept that reality as being possible, then I won’t be able to speak and act honestly with her or myself.

This whole situation is completely fucked up. The fact that my mom and her sisters had to make a choice between keeping Oma in the ICU where the chances of recovery are extremely slim if not impossible, in an inhospitable environment vs. taking her home, where the ends seems more than likely but we can all agree, she would most rather be, is an incredibly fucked up quandary to have to answer.

There is no right answer or decision. As a matter of fact, the concepts of “right” or “wrong” simply don’t pass the sniff test here. So, we should throw those terms out of our vocabulary when thinking through this situation, because we’ll all have to experience this, one way or another at some point in our lives. When someone you know passes away, the decisions are made for you. Death is in the rearview mirror. In this circumstance we face, death is somewhere ahead on a dark highway and we know the exit is coming up.

You can’t really feel or think your way out of this situation. It’s fucked up.

The only thing I know we can do right now is to forgive ourselves for not knowing what to do or feel and acknowledge that we’re all trying our best to deal with this situation and cope. I have felt numb this entire time - certainly my own coping mechanism to process this situation. But every time I look at closely at the situation, I can’t help but shut down. When the memories want to flow and the emotions are set to run lose, my system autonomously shut them down with haste. As I write this sentence, I can feel the dam overflow but the troops in my heart are working overtime to keep things under control. I know that at some point, it will all be too much. And when that time comes, I will re-read this and remind myself to practice forgiveness as best I can. To forgive myself for trying to bottle things up and to forgive myself when I feel ashamed when it all comes crashing down.

I thought long and hard about what I would think and perhaps write when all of this is said and done but that feels to cliche and inauthentic. There isn’t a neat way to tie this all up in a bow so I’ll end this by saying this all fucked up but I forgive myself and you should too.