How long till goodbye?

In light of recent event, whole nation are in the state of shock for what happened to the Flight MH370. The plane, carrying 239 passengers disappeared into thin air at 1.30 a.m. about 120 nautical miles east of Kota Bharu. Search and rescue mission are immediately launched and families and friends keep praying and hoping for the best.

To date, there is still no breakthrough to the whereabouts of the plane. Nobody can even say what really happened to the plane and the fate of all the passengers aboard.  Everybody is still clinging to the hope, however little there is, that the plane will one day come back in good condition, with all passengers safe and sound inside.

It is easy for sympathizers, who have no relations with any passengers aboard, to hope for the best. Furthermore, that is the best we can do as sympathizers. But how about the families and close friends to the passengers on board? Is it easy to hope, or just to accept the loss?

For sympathizers, all of the passengers are just another foreigners, unknown and insignificant in our life. But to the families and friends, the passengers could be somebody significant, someone they love, someone they cling to and someone whom their life revolve around. How could they react to the news of the loss of their beloved?

In psychology, we are taught about the famous Kubler-Ross Model or also known as the five stages of grief. Everybody is familiar with the concept of denial, anger, bargain, depression and acceptance (DABDA). It is stated that human copes with tragedy through these stages, not necessarily passing through all stages or in sequential order, but they will experience at least one of them.

Perhaps, the hardest of all stages is the stage of acceptance. Almost everyone can deal with tragedy by anger, denial, bargaining or being depressed. But to accept the fate, to realise that you have to move on, to acknowledge that somebody significant in your life is no longer around, is kind of hard. To accept means to change our way of life and accustom to the new one. To accept doesn’t necessarily means to forget, but to let go.

Or maybe, acceptance is the easiest way in coping with something. By accepting, it allows us to move on, to not be hold back by something. And what could be much worse than what you are already going through, so why not we just hop on to acceptance? Right?

In the film Castaway, Chuck Noland (played by Tom Hanks) was stranded on an island for four years after a cargo plane he was boarding crashed. When he was finally found and return to his city, people had long held a funeral for him, and even his wife had been marrying somebody else. His wife had accepted his death and moved on, but later found out that he was still alive. Conflict much? (Don’t worry, in Castaway, the wife decided to move on and stay with her current family, and Tom Hanks went separate way)

To accept the sure thing, is one thing, and to accept the unsure, is another thing. But sooner or later, everybody have to move on, and the easier way to do so is to accept. We are not talking about search and rescue mission that can be halted at any moment when it drains a lot of resources without giving any results. We are talking about humans, who have no power to do anything except to cope with his emotion.

So, how long should you wait to accept your fate? Can you move on without accepting the unsure? Should you wait for the unsure to become sure, or will you become more accepting as the time pass? When and how will you say the last goodbye to your beloved one?

Pray for MH370.

By;
Ahmad Shahi bin Mohd Nazri