KLANG: Amnah Mohd Shariff, 65, was heavy-hearted when she realised her son Shaikh Mohd Noor Shaikh Mahmood, 44, was not among the first 20 Malaysian victims involved in the Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 tragedy to be brought back home on Friday.
Well aware that not all the bodies of 298 passengers and crew had been found, Amnah could only hope her son's body has been identified and would be repatriated to Malaysia soon.
To her, it did not matter whether it was just a finger or an arm that was identified as she prayed that there would be at least a part of her son to bury.
When New Straits Times visited her home on Thursday, she revealed that she had been invited to attend the National Mourning Day ceremony at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport's Bunga Raya complex but she had opted to stay home instead.
"Other families will go there and receive their loved ones' bodies. If I go, I will leave empty handed," she said shaking her head and stifling a sob.
Shaikh Mohd Noor, a flight attendant on MH17, had left his mom with a recording of himself singing a self-composed birthday song to her before he left for Amsterdam.
Amnah, who had played back her son's crooning for scores of friends and reporters when the tragedy occurred more than a month ago, revealed that she no longer had the nerves to replay the recording.
She could not hold back her sadness when she recalled a previous conversation with her son.
"He told me he has travelled all over the world after so many years but no other food was comparable to my cooking," she said as tears flowed freely from her eyes.
Shaikh Mohd Noor's younger sister, Siti Noradziah, 29, also shared that she missed her brother.
To help ease the feelings of missing him, she admitted that she had been collecting newspaper clippings which mentioned her brother in an orange folder.
As she flipped through the pages of clippings, she reminisced that Kenny G, Michael Jackson and Malaysian rock band Search were among her brother's favourite musicians.
"I can remember his music taste so clearly because I heard it being played over and over in his room," she said.
The family has already booked a burial plot at a cemetery in Kampung Pendamar in hopes of their loved one's return.
Shaikh Mohd Noor perished when the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777-200 he was in was shot down in eastern Ukraine on July 17.