In a city where nothing is free, residents daily reckon with the cost of grief
On the long drive to the cemetery, my mother turns to me and says, “I don’t know why, but there is something about our land that makes me feel so close to death.”
Death seems to linger in Jakarta, a constant, haunting presence. It takes on many forms—in everyday tragedy, in conversations, or just in the quiet awareness of its inevitability. We grow accustomed to its presence in the wails that reverberate in news reports: yesterday, a mother took her children and her own life in Bandung; today, a flood engulfs the Balinese land and swallows a number nearing 20… Even so, grief often remains unexpressed, its weightiness concealed beneath the flow of daily existence. It reveals itself more fully at moments of ritual mourning.
At my father’s grave, we start with a prayer, and adorn the site with a bouquet of tuberose flowers.
