Obituary: Drg. Daniel Nazarudin, born Thio Tjong Bing. A Good Dentist, A Great Person, The Greatest Dad

On Monday, January 23^rd, 2012, at 20.40, my father, Drg. Daniel Nazarudin, born Thio Tjong Bing, passed away. He was 64.

Thio Tjong Bing was born in Pekalongan, Central Java, on February 3^rd, 1947, to Thio Tjin An and Oey Sioe Kim. Thio Tjin An owned a car workshop in Pekalongan, which is why my father always had a passion for all things mechanical. In our family, he is ‘the last handyman’ – while the younger generation prefer to throw away broken stuff and getting new ones, he would dutifully spend much time and money in trying to fix broken equipments. Just weeks before he passed away, he had a project to fix our water pumps, causing a shortage of water supply in our house for a while – then he later told me: “You’re right – in the end I decided to buy a new one!”. But he didn’t give up – eventually he did fix the broken pump and now we have 2 pumps in our house.

Thio Tjong Bing had an older sister, Thio Giok Hiang. Both had a happy childhood, my dad being the adventurous one and his sister being the obedient one. He often spoke of my grandmother’s fondness for kungfu novels and movie theatres, and my grandfather’s excel in Dutch language and music. His happy childhood was cut short as his father, Thio Tjin An, passed away when he was in Junior High School. I remember my grandmother told me that both children came crying to her, because they were afraid that they can’t go to school anymore. “From that moment on, I sold everything I had, one by one, to finance the education of your dad and your aunt” said my grandmother.

Pursuing education brought Thio Tjong Bing from Pekalongan to Semarang, where he spent his Senior High School at Loyola College, and then to Bandung. My father always wanted to be a civil engineer or an architect. But at that time, he did not have a chance to go Bandung’s Institute of Technology, which had a good architecture department (where his sister studied and I got my degree from). Instead, faith brought him to the Faculty of Dentistry, Padjadjaran University, also in Bandung. He doesn’t like dentistry, but that does not stop him from being a perfectionist at work. “I never liked dentistry, so I need more energy to perform my work perfectly” he said once. “Being a dentist is a dilemma: when you’re young, you have a lot of energy, but not enough experience so you have only few patients. When you’re older and more experienced, you’ll have more patients, but not anymore the energy to perform the work – so you just can’t reap the maximum financial benefit out of this profession” he said.

After he retired from hospital duty and focused on his own practice, he seemed to enjoy his work more – not because of the work itself, but because his profession prompted him to meet a huge network of friends. “When I go to your father to fix my teeth, it takes him 15 minutes to do the job and 45 minutes to chat!” commented a friend of mine. He was always a ‘people person’, and in people finally he is at peace with his career.

It is in his university years, in 1967, that the Indonesian Government required all Chinese Indonesian to bear an Indonesian name. He chose ‘Daniel Nazarudin’ as his name, stated by a decree on the same year. It is also in this period, that he met my mother, Ketty Wilandow (born Oey Ketty), a student at the Law School of the University of Parahyangan in Bandung. They told me a story of how they met: it involves a roundabout at Jl. Dr. Otten, Bandung. Under the shade of the waving mahogany branches, my father rode a motorcycle on one side of the roundabout, going from his dorm at Jl. Dago to his campus at Jl. Dipati Ukur, while my mother rode a motorcycle on the other side, going from her house at Jl. Pasirkaliki to her campus at Jl. Merdeka. Their family already knew each other, so the story is probably romanticized, but yet it is in those frequent rendezvouz that they fell in love. My mother, three years senior to my father, was fixing her mind to her study, not marriage. “But your father was very persistent” she said with a smile.

They got married in Queen Restaurant Bandung, on December 22^nd , 1974. After the marriage, they had three children: Harry Hardianto Nazarudin, and twin sisters Erika Amelia Nazarudin and Erina Natania Nazarudin. My memories of my childhood were very happy ones, although we did not have much at that time. I remember my father went to work on a red ‘Duck’ Honda 50 motorcycle, often braving through rains and bad weather. I remember our first black and white TV, which was a great luxury for us. But my father always cherished his cars – it is by the cars he owns, he measures his success. We went from a frequently-broken battered-old Peugeot 405, to a rattling loud red Daihatsu Taft, and finally my father managed to buy his first pride: a green Honda Civic Wonder sedan. “I dreamt last night, that your grandpa came and had a look at our new car!” he exclaimed to me one morning.

Tooth by tooth, filling by filling, he managed to grow our family’s finances from scratch. We moved from a small house at Jl. Bima 155, where he had his private practice, to Jl. Walik 11. We spent some years there, then moved to Jl. Bima 98, right in front of his practice, so he does not have to travel far to go to work. This house was his dream: bought as a run-down house, he built it brick by brick over long periods of time, depending on a tight budget, to become a 2 story residence. His prized car also improved: now it’s a white Honda Accord Maestro. He used to polish and treat the car like his most valuable possession, nobody could tamper with its white paint.

Nothing could have prepared us for what was coming in 2007: on a dark day, July 15^th, 2007, his daughter, dr. Erina Natania Nazarudin, who studied medicine and was sent on assignment in Fakfak, West Papua, lost her life in a car accident after having saved 2 lives: a mother and her baby with a birth problem. It was a shock for the whole family, whom hitherto had a peaceful, calm, and happy life. This was the first introduction to death, in its most dreadful form, for the whole family. My father was deeply saddened by the incident. But after a while, he seemed to accept it. “Erina is already happy in Heaven” he said, repeatedly. “It is the living that we need to take care of”.

Dad has an uncanny ability to laugh. Whenever he gathers with his companions, there is always laughter on the table. His friends call him names, and he would retaliate. He is a true sanguine: from laughter to anger, from sadness to joy, for him it’s just a matter of time. They were all short bursts – he was never sad or angry at long periods of time. He is always good with people, he can connect with almost everybody. Being a doctor, his true calling is to help people. And he is always proud of it. “Doctors work on their own – there is no boss to supervise you. So you can only be true to yourself” he said. That’s also why, he never became ‘a businessman’ he’d always wanted to be. The business world is just too complex for him – full of mischief and dark strategies. Yet, sometimes he became disappointed with himself, not being able to be ‘the rich businesspeople’.

On death, he had one wish. “I don’t want to be sick for a long time” he said once. “If my time comes, just make it quick – I don’t want to be a burden to the living”. Just a few weeks before, we had a conversation when he visited me in Jakarta, discussing about family members who have been given longevity. “Most of them, Dad, are not like your father – exuberant dynamic person with bursts of emotion. Most of them are calm, relaxed people, who accept life as it is and not trying to change it too much. So you have to be like that, if you want to live a long life” I told him. He smiled – he knew he’s not that type, and neither am I. On January 24^th, 2012, in the arms of his wife Ketty Nazarudin, at their residence in Jl. Bima 98, Drg Daniel Nazarudin passed away suddenly after having his last dinner: a hearty portion of chicken satay and lontong from his favorite, RM Sate ‘Asli’ at Jl. Maulana Yusuf Bandung. He passed away according to his wish: blisteringly fast, sending another shockwave for the family.

But then again – as Dad always said: we need to care for the living, as the dead is already happy with Lord Jesus in Heaven. Looking back, if there is one thing that I could change, it is that I would like him to see myself making a family, going through struggles and tribulations as he did, listening to his advice along the way. It is rather sad that as my journey is starting, his ended. What I can do now, is to share memories of him, like he did with his own father, and uses it to propel my life into the future with great confidence and strength, so Dad would visit me in a dream one day when I buy my first Ferrarri and said: Well done son!  I know you can do it!

Farewell, Dad. Till we meet again.

PS: please pray for my mother, Ketty Nazarudin, who is currently being treated for stroke at a hospital. May the Lord give her strength to move on.

Bandung, 29 January 2011