Remembering Ria ( 2 )

Several days before I went to Jakarta for vacation, I got a text from my cousin, Ria.
She asked me if I could buy her melaleuca cajuputi oil
( Indonesians love this oil. A remedy for common cold ).
I texted her back, saying I could . I asked her what brand that she liked.
She liked Cap Lang .

Little that I know , that would be our last contact .

On the night I left Jakarta, heading back to US, my mom called me.
Ria died on August 31, 2012.
Rafting Incident.

Oh Ria...Thank God, I was given a chance to spend three days with her together this year
( blog entry title .. Mama's Weekend Out )

She was my cousin from my dad's side. She was born and raised in Jakarta, Indonesia.
She was a happy person.
Her nickname, Ria, means " happy " in Indonesian, really matched her personality.
She was very caring and generous.
She loved shopping.. also loved shopping for others. She loved outdoors.
She was energetic . She enjoyed life. So it was very hard for me to imagine Ria died.

I went to her casket viewing in Sausalito.  She wore a nice red dress that her husband picked for her.
I was touched to see how loved she had been by Chris, her husband and stepdaughters.
She had a good life with them..
I am thankful for the Lethems to have her as their family.They were her joy .

I was sorry I did not come to her funeral.. it was in Hawaii..
I heard that Amber and Cameo , her stepdaughters, performed a dance in her funeral.
Ria learned ballet since she was young until her twenties.
Later on when the ballet become difficult, she failed the exam ( if I am not mistaken, for several times )
That did not make her leave dancing.
She then quit the classic ballet, joined the jazz  instead.
She choreographed ballet dance for the church performance several times.
Once, a friend of ours who was into performing arts,
asked her to choreographed a ballet dance for a Christmas performance.
I believed she got paid for that. Her mom mentioned that she was very brave to do this
while she did not pass her ballet exam...
She did not let limitation got in the way of completing something..
With Ria, everything that needed to be done, will be done.
That was one thing that I learned most  from her.. Getting things done..

I believe she quit dancing when she continued her study in Swiss.

The melaleuca cajuputi oil  that she asked, were packed and brought to US .
I gave those to a couple of  friends instead.
Ria's memory, though, will always stay with me and those who love her
Life's is short.. Her life was too short for her and her family...

For several days I try to think or not thinking about her...
about how fragile we are as humans..
Sometimes I cried .. I imagined how hard it must be for Chris, Amber and Cameo..
Also to Alex and Priscilla,  to all our relatives in Indonesia..

Her story ended... the chapters in Ria's book ended. The end...
Sometimes good story made you want for more..
But it is up to the writer decide how long or how short the story is...

I believe there will be Ria's sequel in another dimension...
A friend of mine who got his phd in mathematics from Berkeley,
once said.. that according to math calculation, there is a tenth dimension...
which Ria maybe in right now

Rest in peace Ria...