Pages of Mariskova

Do you know how it feels when the phone rings in the middle of the night? Unless you have a 9-month-pregnant relative, you probably wouldn't want to answer the call. It's not because of the interrupted sleep (well, okay, it's also because of that) but because of the news waiting on the other side of the line. No sane (wo)man, I repeat, no sane(wo) man would call you in the middle of the night just to say 'Hai, Jeeeeng, piye kabare?'
The news of the midnight call must be so terrible that it cannot wait for morning to come...

It's the same feeling I have whenever my mom makes the effort of calling us from Indonesia. Especially if she uses her handphone (right, to Japan!). Okay, my parents or mostly my mom would call us like once a week. But whenever she makes that phone calls, she would ask for Hikari and Hikari only.
Ringgggg...
Us: Hello?
Mom: Hai! Hikari mana?
Her phone calls are like that. Short, to the point, only for Hikari. If Hikari doesn't want to answer her calls, she would simply say, "Alright then. I just want to talk to him. Bye." and click.

Now, her phone calls that give me chills are not like that. They are the ones that start like this:
Ringggg...
Us: Hello?
Mom: Hello. How are you? How is your husband? How is Hikari? bla bla bla...
and I would cut her in the middle of her unusual talking: Fine. How are you?
Usually after the how-are-you question, I kind of expecting her to tell me the bad news. Oh, it is like that. Bad news. And I never fail to sense that.

A few days ago, my mom made that kind of phone call. This time she even tried to chat longer. I tried to engage in her loquacious conversation, but I just couldn't so I asked her the ultimate question: how's everybody there?
I wished that time I got it wrong.
But I didn't.

My dad has another typhoid fever.
Both of my brothers are leaving the country almost at the same time for a long term.
Eyang Uti, my mom's mother, is suffering from ovarian cancer...