What doesn't kill me makes me stranger.

Yesterday, a colleague, a dear friend, whom I have known for more than a decade (twelve years to be exact) passed away, after five years battling with cancer. She was more than just a colleague; she was a sister who never failed to motivate me with her priceless advice, may it be on work, love, marriage etc.

I remember the early days of my employment in Astro, which was when I met her. I was just a production assistant then and she was a librarian.

Her office then, was just that of a haulage container, made shift into an office filled with tapes. There was where I spent a lot of my hours, previewing and editing visuals on tape. She always made me feel at home when the rest of the world shunned me like the young newbie I was.

From good strangers, we became good friends.

She looked like the typical ‘makcik’ you see every day, but there was nothing typical about her, neither the way she battled harder than a soldier in the gutters, nor facing her enemy- her plague. Until the very end, she held tight, fighting with full force optimism, clenching to every last drop of hope, that she would win this battle.

I regretted the fact that I didn’t visit her more often. The last visit was when I brought my daughter to her house for Hari Raya. She looked pale and weak from countless series of chemotherapy; not her usual spirited self, but her warmth was still the same - abundance, just like her smile.

I felt bad when she had to clean up after us, after my daughter spilled juice and dropped a jar of cookies on her floor. She told me to stop fussing over a little spilled juice and that fussing over the small stuffs are a waste of time and that time is all we have and time is all God has given us to make out what life is really about.

And I asked her, “What is life all about to you?”

She answered “Life is all about living. Even when your journey in life is moving towards death, it is in the end about how you lived it”

The reality of my story here is that, it is not about the way she fought and it is not that she passed away. The reality is that she lived and for the many years that she graced this world with her warm presence and kind words. It is that she was an amazing and a totally one of a kind, most rarest and wonderful people we sometimes call spirits.

Dealing with loss and death to me, can never get any easier. They say what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger; however, it doesn’t apply to dealing with death of a dear friend or a loved one.

I would say, what doesn’t kill me, makes me stranger.

“To Allah we belong and verily, to Him we shall return.” (Qur’an 2:155-156)

May your soul rest in peace, Kak Zahida.