My Eldest Brother Left Us

Yesterday (6 December), my eldest brother Aminuddin bin Zainuddin left us. He was hospitalised for a day, according to the report due to a stroke. He was already bed-ridden for some time before that, after his eyesight went so bad (we were told). My regret was not being able to see him before this and also we did not manage to get to his funeral last night. We only knew about the burial only very late (after my family went to get some dinner). Before that, we waited to hear what would be the development, where will his body be brought to. The last piece of news that we had then, that his body was at the Forensics Dept of Selayang Hospital. I asked my nephew today on what happened and he told me that they only knew of the body release at 7pm. After the release, it was already late and his family had already decided to do the burial that night without delay, which we respected. So last night, I told my nephew that since we could not make it to the funeral in time (being in Seremban, which is far away from Kepong), we promised to visit his family today and so we did. Saw my step-sister and step-brother was there at the burial (how I wished we could be there too).

So the three most eldest in my family has now gone (see pic). It was the third loss in our family (nephew Nasy and my third eldest Ahmad Tajuddin in May) this year. Those remaining will one day follow their footsteps.

Note: pics are taken from Nasaruddin's FB page.

My brother Aminuddin was a civil engineer at a government department before he retired. After his retirement, he has always shared his stories with me perhaps due to the fact that I know quite a bit of mathematics (some are about powerplay and was pretty sad that he had to go through a lot). I know that he had this ambition of introducing topology in decision making (at least that was what I understood) and perhaps this was rather at odds with his department. He should have been an academic instead of in the government department (but in retrospect, he may not be fully appreciated anyway). I knew that he acquired an impressive book collection that I envied very much. The pic below is how I would like to remember him.

The books may not mean much to others (laymen) but some books in his collection are really extraordinary. I remember he gave me this book by Lambek & Scott on "Introduction to Higher-Order Categorical Logic". At the time, I probably knew some logic but I knew very little about category theory and thus, he was way ahead of me in terms of scouting mathematical areas. It is unfortunate that I have lost this book after lending the book to a colleague. Perhaps I should consider rebuying the book just for memory sake, if not for research.

In my younger days (when my salary was very small), he used to buy me books to help me with my study. The following picture shows one of such books and in it, there is a punch card that bore his handwriting.

May Allah grant him His Forgiveness and Grace onto his soul. Al-Fatihah.