KUALA LUMPUR: Nine years ago, Intan Maizura Othaman was earnestly waiting for news about her husband, Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 crew member Mohd Hazrin Mohamed Hasnan, after the aircraft he was on disappeared.
Then she met him in her dreams.
"B(aby), you have to move on because I have been signed up to leave (this world)," he told her in the dream.
Those words, said Intan, served as her inspiration for strength to this day.
Though Intan makes it a point to keep moving forward, Hazrin still lives in her heart.
Their children, the mementos and abundance of love letters — which she still swoons over to this day — are constant reminders of the life they shared.
Now, almost a decade later, 43-year-old Intan, who is raising their two children Iman, 14, and Muhammad, 9, has accepted that there might not be any official closure as to how she had lost the love of her life.
"Instead of waiting, I tell my children — and myself — whatever happens, we move on... we persevere.
"To force them to search again or even dig the whole ocean, mountains... we can't live in a state where we hold on to that hope until we can't do anything.
"We cannot afford to sit down, hoping, crying and having all these (feelings of) vengeance and anger towards someone or somebody," she told the New Straits Times.
But Intan still hopes that one day she would be able to get to the truth.
"I've been telling (the authorities), if they died, tell us they died. If they're buried somewhere, tell us where. At least we can go or bring home shoes, bags, name tag, bones or whatever."
Theories surrounding the MH370's disappearance have been floating around since the early days, but the family of in-flight supervisor Patrick Gomes take them with a pinch of salt.
Gomes' wife, Jacquita Gonzales, 60, said after nine years, the family would laugh at the many theories, especially some of the more memorable ones — alien abduction and that it got lost in the Bermuda Triangle.
The sadness and longing, however, still remain.
Looking at pictures of debris confirmed to belong to MH370, Gonzales said: "Is this all I have of my husband? I would like to have his suitcase back... I would like to have him back.
"All I have is his picture which we look at all the time, and whatever belongings of his that we have.
"I would love to have 'something' that I can go to every year," she said.
For the time being, Gonzales and her family take it as her husband is living out his lifelong goal of going on a vacation in Bora Bora Island.
"If I can say anything to my husband it would be, 'What took you so long to come back?'
"We used to talk about him wanting to take a vacation to Bora Bora Island so much so that the house was actually named Bora Bora as well.
"Now Patrick is taking a long vacation in Bora Bora without us. We're quite upset as we're supposed to go together," she said.
Gonzales hoped that the authorities would strive to find the truth behind the disappearance of MH370 to prevent a recurrence.
"We don't know what happened or why it happened. So once we get to know all those things, can you imagine how safe travelling would be again?"