ReadingRoom
“Dad went from Tiong Gie Kang to Andy Hermana Kasmara”: a refugee’s story
My Dad was a faithful Catholic, so when he died in July this 12 months, it went with out saying that he was going to have a Catholic funeral. Nevertheless, it had been a very long time since both my sister or I had been Catholic, which probably explains the preparation bumps encountered alongside the way in which.
It began with Oom Frank emailing us from his residence in Toronto to tell us that Dad’s chosen baptismal title was Damien, who’d been his favorite saint. We rummaged by means of Dad’s papers however couldn’t discover any proof. He hadn’t included ‘Damien’ in his Will, or his Final Needs, or every other correspondence.
In the meantime, Oom Frank turned extra insistent: “‘He himself selected to be named after St. Damien Veuster of Moloka’i. I keep in mind vividly once I requested him again then why he selected this Saint for his baptism, since St. Damien was not as well-known. He instructed me the story, and the way he selected him as a result of he admired the heroism and sacrifice of St. Damien. Would you take into account including this title if there’s nonetheless time? Andy Hermana Damien Kasmara. The choice is, after all, yours.’”
He then despatched a prolonged historical past of the saint as an example his significance. We stored to Andy Hermana Kasmara. Oom Frank hadn’t seen Dad since a household marriage ceremony in Bali 9 years in the past, and folks change their minds about issues, even one as wedded to routine as Dad. Apart from, none of his eight siblings had ever known as him Damien, often choosing his Chinese language title, Gie. He launched himself to everybody else as Andy, whereas lately, he was mostly known as Opa due to his closeness to all his grandkids. I replied to Oom Frank to let him know that we’d keep on with what we knew, including that possibly Dad determined in opposition to utilizing the title ‘Damien’ after seeing The Omen and its sequels, as a result of these motion pictures actually made a powerful impression on him. Oom Frank graciously stated that this is perhaps the case certainly, as an alternative of telling me that it was the stupidest factor he’d ever heard.
*
The priest who led the service, Father Sebastian, had by no means met my dad. He was solely there as a result of the priest we had been going to ask, one who had recognized Dad for a lot of a long time, had gone again to Eire. Father Sebastian stated a number of issues about Dad in his homily, in that imprecise approach that travelling audio system who’ve forgotten which metropolis they’re in attempt to flatter a crowd. He spoke with extra authority on an entity named the Angel of Loss of life, and in addition about that point he went to LynnMall and chanced upon a chaotic crowd within the automotive park. He thought a taking pictures had occurred. As a substitute, a person along with his procuring baggage had collapsed on the bottom and died. He additionally talked about a number of different, equally random, individuals who had died, presumably to bolster his central argument, which was that everybody dies.
There was a combination up with the Prayers of the Trustworthy. The sheets given out to a couple of our household associates and family to learn out gave the impression to be leftovers from one other funeral as a result of as an alternative of ‘Andy’, the mourners had been requested as an alternative to “Allow us to pray for Cory, she died with Christ.” Listening to them consult with him as a girl named Cory crammed me with reduction. I used to be anxious about my eulogy however knew now that any mishap I may doubtlessly induce could be about as memorable as something the Holy Ghost stated or did within the Bible. I needn’t have frightened. When it was my flip to talk, my phrases had been eclipsed by an eardrum-bursting hailstorm.
The eulogy had been tough to jot down, just because I used to be unhappy, and it jogged my memory of the final time we’d needed to go about related preparations. When Mum handed away a decade in the past, it was the primary time my dad, my sister, and I had needed to organise a funeral. Nevertheless, the various micro-decisions we’d made for her funeral preparations had been buffered with the reassurance that Dad made the captain’s name. Now with each of them gone the stability was extra delicate, the load of every choice tipping the already laden scales.
His passing wasn’t sudden. Dad had been declining for years from Parkinson’s Illness, whereas a traumatic mind harm he’d suffered from a fall a 12 months in the past had stored us watchful. The medical crew hadn’t anticipated him to outlive that one, so every additional day was an astonishment, however nonetheless. Each time he stumbled, or despatched a confused textual content, or when his goals blurred into his waking hours, I’d think about the subsequent steps and wind up feeling panicked. In the long run none of it was as dramatic as my reptilian mind made it out to be. All of it simply got here all the way down to a bunch of issues we needed to steadily work by means of, from packing up his belongings to making ready the funeral discover to letting others assist. Our uncles and aunties despatched cash to help with prices, whereas family and friends turned up with flowers, kue and groceries.
*
Though we didn’t associate with Oom Frank’s request, the perception was welcome, and I may additionally see that passing on the story gave him some solace. For me it simply added one other layer to the kue lapis that was my mother or father’s relationship with the Catholic Church. The Church each saved them and created a problematic lifelong bond, one which Mum embraced wholly, which I understood — if it wasn’t for the Church, she would have by no means acquired an schooling — however I knew Dad was uneasy with many features of it. He didn’t say a lot concerning the three years he spent at boarding faculty, run by Dutch spiritual brothers in Bogor, however one in every of his siblings as soon as instructed me that it was a supply of deep harm and unhappiness for him, at the same time as he recounted their nasty punishments virtually as a matter of pleasure. I by no means let on that I’d came upon how he actually felt concerning the faculty, sensing, maybe, a have to reinvent his time there for us as a boy’s personal story of bravado. When Sinead O’Connor tore up the picture of the Pope, I detected an virtually imperceptible nod. Just about.
For a very long time, all we actually knew about their transfer right here was that the Catholic Church sponsored their passage. That they had truly come to Aotearoa New Zealand below the brand new refugee coverage, after the occasions of 1965-6 had left Indonesia in turmoil. An estimated as much as 1.2 million individuals had been murdered throughout the US-backed genocide, principally members of the Communist Social gathering but in addition everybody from Gerwani ladies to commerce unionists, ethnic Chinese language to leftists. I’ll have examine it first in a historical past guide. Everybody has their coping mechanisms for surviving trauma, and my mother and father’ approach of processing theirs was to say little about this era or different tragedies, comparable to when Mum’s dad was left for lifeless in a machete assault, or when Dad’s uncle was taken on the age of 25 by the Japanese throughout the occupation, by no means to return. They had been completely satisfied to inform us limitless ghost tales nevertheless, leaving me with a everlasting worry of ghosts. Dad even claimed he and his associates met the kuntilanak one evening, a ghost so well-known that she has her personal Wikipedia web page.
There’s a lot cultural overlap all through South-East Asia in relation to ghostlore, and variations of the kuntilanak are additionally present in Malaysia and the Philippines. Inside Indonesia itself, the spirit world is seen as separated from the bodily by means of the thinnest of membranes (additionally acquainted to te ao Māori and lots of different cultures), at the same time as the range of its a whole bunch of ethnic teams means there are simply as many permutations as to what this implies in observe. For somebody like my mum’s dad, my Opa, it manifested in a private ritual he performed along with his keris each Friday, a convention based mostly on indigenous Javanese practices with Hindu-Buddhist influences. The otherworldly spilled onto the nationwide stage in methods comparable to when a significant newspaper ran an intensive piece complaining that politicians who may afford essentially the most extremely ranked dukuns (loosely translated as ‘shaman’) had the distinct edge in upcoming elections.
*
Being ethnically Chinese language throughout that point made my mother and father immediate potential targets, in addition to their affiliation with leftist scholar politics. It was worse for Oom Frank as a result of he was additionally roommates with an artist who was a part of Lekra, a cultural and social motion related to the Indonesian Communist Social gathering. Mum and Dad did take us to see The 12 months of Residing Dangerously after we had been children. It’s very a lot a 1980’s Hollywood relic — out of Indonesia’s then 148 million inhabitants, they couldn’t discover one to be greater than a bit participant to Mel Gibson and Sigourney Weaver, whereas Linda Hunt seems in yellowface, a task for which she received an Oscar. Dad didn’t say something about that, however he did say, “The truth was worse. They didn’t present the rivers working crimson with blood.”
The perpetrators of the 1965-6 genocide had been by no means charged and a few even had been celebrated as nationwide heroes. Presumably the eye my mother and father gave to the religious realm was from feeling let down by its materials mirror.
I knew it could’ve been an excessive amount of to ask for any indication that Dad may wish to be farewelled with the title he was given at delivery: Tiong Gie Kang. Dad used to disclaim his Chinese language heritage. Hardline assimilation insurance policies will try this to you. Suharto’s many anti-Chinese language legislations within the 1960’s (most had been revoked throughout Abdurrahman ‘Gus Dur’ Wahid’s presidency within the early 2000s) included the Cupboard Presidium Choice 127 of 1966, which pressured residents with a Chinese language title to vary to an Indonesian-sounding one. Names function an anchor level of our identification, and when altered or modified altogether, inform us a lot concerning the conventions or disruptions of the world round us, or else calibrate what’s occurring on the within with the outer.
From that whisper of Dad’s Hokkien title prefixed in ‘Kasmara’ to his anglicised ‘Andy’, his names had been a signifier of the non-public, cultural and historic connections and seismic shifts he’d gone by means of throughout his lifetime. Dad went from Tiong Gie Kang to Andy Hermana Kasmara, and Mum went by means of one thing related, from Sien Nio Gouw to Liddy Hiltrudis Danusaputra. In response to the remainder of his household, Dad was the one who recommended utilizing ‘Kasmara’, a shortened model of ‘Kasmaranjaya’, which loosely interprets as ‘falling head over heels in love’. They reckoned he’d taken it from a soccer participant’s title, noticed in a newspaper. Dad disagreed and stated the others had forgotten it was a priest who recommended it, including that they had been all fishing along with stated priest on a ship on the time, as if this element was irrefutable proof that his was the right model.
*
After the funeral we discovered a scrap of paper connected to our mother and father’ marriage ceremony album with proof of his chosen baptism title: Damianus Sebastianus, above his Chinese language title. A nudge that all of us comprise multitudes inside us, and the way we are able to by no means know all of the totally different features which make up one individual, even these closest to us. Just a few different issues had been unearthed about him that I hadn’t recognized about (although sadly not the memoir he’d apparently written). Anecdotes from associates, former workmates and different members of the family got here by means of that painted a extra vivid image of him than I ever may, particularly as for the previous few years I’d managed to slender down all descriptive phrases of Dad to only one: cussed.
Quickly after he recovered from mind surgical procedure, ill-pleased to be nonetheless alive (‘subsequent time, don’t hassle reviving me’), it felt like he was doing every part he may consider to return to the lifeless. At all times impartial in essentially the most curmudgeonly of the way, he’d abandon his strolling body to potter across the hospital ward, ignoring my reminders that I used to be there to assist. He scared me even when he did deign to make use of it, dashing alongside the corridors far too quick, the employees calling out as he whipped previous, “Decelerate, Andy!” I’d get exasperated and scold him. He all the time ignored me. Cussed.
Caring. Selfless. Cultured. Sensible at chess. Eager volunteer with St Vincent de Paul. Recollections from others continued, and I used to be lastly in a position to scrub off the reminiscences of somebody I used to be all the time grumbling at about how reckless he was being along with his strolling body, changing them with a fuller model.
Most of the time it’s associates, not household, who know you greatest, and so the final phrase on Dad’s title ought to defer to one in every of his oldest associates, Jos, who he’d recognized since they had been each college students in Bandung within the 1960’s. In a touching eulogy to him, learn out by Jos’s son Felix, he introduced up why he’d all the time known as Dad ‘Boss’ and vice versa. After commencement, Jos helped Dad get a job as a clerk at an organization he labored for, so Dad took to calling him ‘Boss’. Ultimately Dad rose within the ranks and Jos began calling him ‘Boss’ again. They moved on from the corporate, and from the nation, however the affectionate moniker caught, greater than any of Dad’s different names, proper as much as the top. Right here’s to you, Boss.
Angelique Kasmara was commissioned by Joanna Cho, visitor editor at ReadingRoom this week. She has commissioned work from different Asian New Zealand writers. Tomorrow: Szening Ooi on rising up in a “innocent cult”.