Crime scene: A part of the MH17 crash site near Rassypnoe, Ukraine. — KAMARUL ARIFFIN/The Star
PETALING JAYA: For Diyana Yazeera Yazli, the phrase “life goes on” hits her differently.
“I don’t celebrate my birthday or Hari Raya the way I used to. And whenever I see a flight stewardess in a Malaysia Airlines uniform, it hits me the hardest,” said Diyana, whose mother was one of the 15 crew members onboard the tragic MH17.
Diyana was just 15 when the MAS flight was shot down over eastern Ukraine on July 17, 2014.
Since then, her life has taken a different course.
“I wouldn’t call it coping. Life goes on whether I like it or not, so I live each day, every passing moment, as it is. It’s just living,” said Diyana following the recent headlines about MH17 again.
(Three months ago, judges in Holland convicted three men – two former Russian intelligence agents and a Ukrainian separatist leader – of murder and sent them to life imprisonment for their role in the shooting down of MH17.)
For Diyana, the jail term was just a slap on the wrist compared to the magnitude of their crime.
However, she said she is grateful that she could put a face to her mother’s murderer.
Now 24, Diyana is candid about what she went through.
She was about to take the Form Three Assessment (PT3) examination at Kolej Tunku Kurshiah in Seremban, when she heard of the news through a family member.
She lost her mother, MAS chief stewardess Dora Shahila Kassim, who was a single mother, and also her own interest in planes.
“The love I had being on an aircraft is now the thing I fear the most. I haven’t been able to go on a flight without having a full-on panic attack,” she said.
Diyana, who has graduated with a law degree and is being granted a scholarship from Yayasan Siti Sapura to pursue a master’s degree in the United Kingdom, said all these achievements came along with a wave of sadness.
“Thoughts like ‘she is supposed to be the one putting on my graduation robe’ or ‘she’s not going to be here to see me admitted as a barrister in England’ burns in my mind.”
“This happens every time something big happens in my life,” she said.
Diyana said it was not an easy transition after her mother’s death.
“I never got to call any place a home because she was and will forever be my home.”
She recalled how she moved from one relative’s house to another multiple times throughout the years “probably because I just felt out of place after a few years or just because I needed to find a place to call home”.
“I’ve never fully recovered from my mother’s passing and I don’t think I ever will, but I’ve learned to accept her being gone,” she said.
However, looking back, she is glad that she grew up well and made amends with her father’s side of the family.
“My family is one of my biggest blessings. Also, familial relationships are not limited to those by blood,” she said.
There is one major lesson from her mother that she would always remember, which is not to be dependent on anyone.
“I will never let that go. I only have myself and God. This is more than enough,” she said.
