My Life...

Selamat Pagi Malaysia

I would like to share with you guys a matter that is personal, and really should be of no interest to anyone else but my family - the family of Abdul Hamid bin Dr. Latiff. My late father Hamid Latiff retired as Director of CID and my grandfather, Dr. Latiff is the first Malay Doctor in the then Malaya.

This is a tale of a family that was fortunate enough to have lived a comfortable life because our father, had a decent job in the police. He lived a responsible life, and the greatest accolade that the people he worked with had given him is that he is not the "cari makan" type.

My mother is a mother anyone would have been proud to call mother and I thank Allah that I was also blessed with a wife that almost....almost, put my late mother to shame. We married when I was 21 and she 23...she bought me my trousers and the wedding ring for our wedding and suffice for me to say that we did live our life till death did us part...but to my mind, we are still together until my death too...and even then we will still be together forever....long story short, I had a good wife.

Both, my mother and my wife are no longer in my life, no longer by my side to guide me in mine....for even at 75, there are days when I need that guidance. And my dear father died in 1996 - twenty-six years ago.

This family of good decent and responsible parents had four children. Hussein, Rahman (Mann), Zainal (Payne) and Rohaya (Ayoh). Hussein (me) the eldest now lives in Melbourne. Mann is no longer with us...he passed away a few months back. Payne is Dato Dr, Zainal Abidin Hamid a Cardiologist with Clinics at the Twin Towers and other places unknown to me. And my beloved sister, Ayoh lives somewhere in KL.

Datuk Dr. Zainal Abidin Abdul Hamid

Why do I want to share with you guys this tale about my family? Let me story you....

Let me start with the "as we are now" and then work back to the past.

Today I have not talked with Payne from that time when my father passed away...and maybe more ...much more years than the 26 years since our father died. The same for Mann who passed away recently but thanks to Allah, I have been able to talk to my sister a few times in the past 26 years...only a few times.

When Mann passed away a few months back, I only learned about it a few days later when a cousin in KL asked me if I know that my brother Mann had passed away! This brought back unpleasant memories for me because I was also not informed of my father's passing twenty-six years back. I was then living in Perth and I only knew of my Father's passing a week later when my aunties called me early one Sunday morning and asked me why I had not come home for my father's funeral, the week before.

To be continued: