I woke up on the morning of September 27, 2023, to my mother entering the room. With a trembling voice, she spoke softly, “Mureti passed away.” She died in her hometown, Cirebon, just three days away from her 63rd birthday. When the news of her passing broke, I sat silently, trying to process everything. I knew I did not have the time to grieve just yet as I had several agendas that day. But I would be lying if I said that memories of her did not cloud my head all day.
Mureti was the help at my house. She worked with the family for almost 13 years. Her story was quite tragic, but it was not unusual for someone from a village with little to no educational background. She was only a middle-school graduate and dropped out of high school when she married a construction worker at the age of 15 or 16. Again, it was common for young girls during her time. Shortly after getting married, she was pregnant and then gave birth to a beautiful baby girl named Sunari.
Fast forward to the early 2000s. Her daughter was pregnant. Mureti was about to be a grandmother. However, that happiness did not last long. Her daughter was involved in an accident. I could not remember the details, but she was about to get off a bus when the angel of death greeted her and her unborn son.
At that time, Mureti had gotten a divorce from her first husband. She had no one. Along the way, she got married again to her second husband. He, too, unfortunately, passed away — making her a widow. Again, she got married for the third time, and it also ended with a divorce.
By the time she started working at our house, she was almost all alone in this world.
Our family had had a fair share of helpers, all with different personalities and attitudes. But Mureti was a strange one indeed. Her antics would make us raise our eyebrows. She would laugh at almost anything. But the thing that was peculiar of hers was her echolalia. Whenever something scared her or surprised her in any way, she would say the most horrific toilet-talk words. This condition allowed her to gain friends since people always found it entertaining.
At one point during her first few years of working, my family started to crack as my parents were getting a divorce. Life went south for me. I took everything pretty hard at that time. That is another story to tell at another time.
Not long after the divorce had been finalised, my mother was forced out of the house, this also included me and my brother since she legally got the custody of both children.
Not only did my father try to get custody of us, but he also tried to get Mureti to work for him. He even offered her a bigger salary, an amount that my mother could never afford. However, she declined.
Mureti followed my mother, brother, and me when we moved to a two-bedroom rented house in a densely-populated area in South Jakarta. You might ask, “How was the sleeping arrangement?” Well, you see, my mother brought her queen-sized mattress to one of the tiny rooms where all three of us slept together. As for Mureti, she stayed in the other room, along with our four wardrobes. My grandmother gave her a light mattress to sleep on, but most times, she would rather sleep on the cold floor — claiming that it was breezier that way.
We stayed in that house for five years. During those five years, Mureti made a name for herself within the neighbourhood. Everybody knew who she was. She got along with almost everyone, and nearly every time I returned from school, I found her sitting on the neighbour’s porch and talking with several other people. That was part of her routine. Well, aside from preparing meals for us and doing chores.
When we moved to a much bigger house, Mureti came with us again.
That was until Ramadan 2018 when she decided to return to her hometown and retire. My mother had no problems with that, knowing that Mureti was almost 60 then.
We did not hear much from her. She rarely called, and at one point, we lost contact for months. One night in early 2019, there she was, ringing the doorbell, and my mother was the one who opened the door. Needless to say, my mother was surprised. And she was even more surprised to see our old neighbour was also there.
Mureti did not look like her at all. She lost weight and cried as she told my mother the whole tale.
She jumped on a bus from Cirebon to Jakarta with only IDR 100,000 in her hands. By all odds, the bus driver she was on was her late husband’s friend. So she did not have to pay for the ride. When she arrived in Jakarta, she went to our old neighbourhood since she did not know the way to our new house in West Jakarta. Our old next-door neighbour kindly offered to take her to our new home. However, Mureti could not remember the name of the road, so they had just spent the entire evening going in circles. Luckily, they finally managed to reach our house.
The tale was even sadder than how she looked at that time. Her niece and that niece’s husband had taken Mureti’s house as a pawn. She was homeless and penniless. That was the reason why she was so skinny. She could only eat one meal daily due to her limited money.
My mother, of course, felt empathetic. So, she accepted her back into the house. My mother and brother even helped her pay off her IDR 11 million debts that she owed to a loan shark back in her hometown. My mother also offered to help her save her money so that her corrupt nieces and nephews would not take advantage of her.
As I said before, Mureti was technically not alone in this world. She had a nephew and three nieces who were all the children of her late brother. But Mureti was always too nice to them, and they always took advantage of her naivety.
And then fast forward to mid-2021, when my family got kicked out of the house by our extended family (another story to tell), Mureti came with us.
Sometimes, I think that she was one of the reasons why my extended family did not want us living in that house anymore. That also solidified my belief that sometimes blood is not thicker than water.
In early 2022, my mother learned that she would be retiring soon as she would turn 60 later that year. Obviously, she shared the news with everyone, including Mureti. My mother told her, “I cannot pay your salary anymore, so it’s fine if you want to leave.”
And she did. She left. She even packed all of her belongings with her.
Around early May, my mother heard from her. She said she was working as a caregiver for an old lady, her neighbour. My mother was glad to hear that, especially knowing that her salary was two times bigger than what my mother had given her.
Later, in June, I travelled to Yogyakarta with my childhood best friend. My mother called me while I was sitting through an 8-hour train ride. I asked, “What was the matter?”
Apparently, Mureti had called her because she saw my WhatsApp status, where I posted a video of Lula (re: my dog) eating leftover spaghetti that my mother had cooked the day before. She asked how everyone was doing. And then my mother said that I was going to Yogyakarta, and she could visit and stay over if she wanted.
Which she did. She came to the house and stayed over. Then, my mother discovered that Mureti was no longer working for that old lady, and she struggled to pay bills. Again, my mother restated, “I cannot pay for your salary.” She replied, “That’s fine. I want to live here. At least I know I have a roof over my head and food to eat.” That was how she was welcomed back to our house for the second time.
For the next few months, she still helped with the house chores, but not as much. Mainly because she began to get weaker by the day.
Problems began to arise when her niece, who pawned her house, changed the name of Mureti’s house certificate to hers. Not only that, but she was — still is —in tons of debt, and Mureti was the one who got chased by the debt collectors.
We noticed how that ate her up mentally, which eventually affected her health. She would go without eating for days, and my mother had to firmly tell her to eat. Those thoughts even caused her to fall, and that caused breathing issues.
My mother was mortified. She was afraid that something terrible might happen to Mureti, and she was scared that if it happened at this house, our extended family would ultimately banish us from the premises. I could see that my mother’s reasonings were valid. I asked if Mureti wanted to move to my father’s house, but she did not want to. She said she would rather live with one of her nieces (not the serial debtor). So, that was it. The last time I saw her was when her nephew picked her up so she could go and live with her niece for the time being until she recovered.
Mureti was by my side for almost half of my life. She began working when I was 12 and finally left the house in May 2023, when I had already turned 25.
I naively thought that she would come back again after her health was restored. I believed she would return, and we would celebrate that day by taking her to a Warung Steak near our house.
I did not say a proper goodbye, just small pats on her shoulder — she was way shorter than me, and we would laugh about how she was as short as my chest. Her clothes are still here, untouched, inside a cardboard box.
I never told her how much I love her and how thankful I am to have had her around to help care for me when my mother was not around. I never showed any affection in that way.
But I was glad she was the happiest when she lived with our family. My mother never yelled at her — even when she made mistakes, we let her sit at our dining table, invited her to celebrate birthdays, and bought her food she had never tried before. We treated her like she was part of our family because she was.
I cherished all the memories of when she was around, especially when she was there for me when no one else was.
On my 14th birthday, no one seemed to care that I had just gotten older. My parents were busy quarrelling, my friends distanced themselves from me, and my brother seemed to be caught up with other matters. I was crying on my birthday. That was when Mureti came to me and asked if I wanted to go with her to visit her relatives’ house. I said, okay. So, we went there, to the small alleys behind a graveyard in South Jakarta. Mureti introduced me to her relatives, and she referred to me as her child. When we were about to go home, we stopped by a small shop. She got me a Shaun the Sheep doll. It cost quite a lot, but she bought that for me. She said it was my birthday gift from her. And suddenly, I did not feel alone anymore.
Her story might not be relevant to other people. Some might think, “She was just a help.” But not to me.
If anyone thought she was alone, you are wrong. She was never alone. She always had me, my mother, and my brother.
And I am telling this story because I do not want her story to die with her so that the world will never forget who she was, I would never.
Rest in peace, Mbak Mureti. You will forever stay in my heart. Happy birthday in heaven! I hope you get to celebrate your birthday this year with Sunari, too.
PS: By the time I write this piece, I have already cried a good amount of tears.
