Miss Brown turned eighty years of age yesterday.
And far from it being one of those boisterous, noisy celebrations with husband and children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren running around at a birthday celebration feast, it was a quiet affair.
A very quiet affair.
By her bed side celebrating with her with a slice of chocolate hazelnut cake bought from Bengawan Solo was just her birth child and her caregiver. I don't know whether there was anyone else she wanted by her side.
I would assume so.
After all, no one, no one ever, goes through life's ups and downs with the dream that they'll pass their 80th birthday with no one whom they care about by their side. No one goes through life seeking for loneliness and a quiet pass-through on the day they commemorate their ripe, old age.
Definitely not Miss Brown, whom had spent much of her life trying means after means after means to preserve the family togetherness. There was little she had not done to keep the family together, and maybe, just maybe, her methods might have been orthodox, her ways might have been traditional and dominating, but in her mind, she didn't know any other way, and those methods were the best way she could have kept the family together.
Would she have had her husband and her adopted daughter by her side if she had been less dominating, more relaxed and tried some other way?
Would she have had a livelier birthday celebration at her favorite Chinese restaurant if she had not utilized her ways?
I don't know.
And neither do I find it necessary to know.
Because the decision belongs to each individual person at the end of the day, and I'm afraid that on her birthday, neither her husband nor the one whom she really wanted to be by her side was there.
Still, a birthday is a birthday, and although I'm not sure if the nursing staff at the home do the October babies thing, I'm glad that, despite everything that had been attempted on her, despite the depression and the abandonment, despite the pressures of life upon her shoulders, she had the capacity to sit up, grab the spoon and stuff the cake in her mouth, savouring the taste of chocolate and hazelnut, and then slowly swallowing it.