But what should have been a happy time became the beginning of a tragedy as Isnan, 58, was found dead eight months later, believed to have committed suicide.

Tatik found her husband’s body in their bedroom on Monday, only one hour after she had left home to take their 7-year-old granddaughter to school in Jabung village, Talun district.

The police have recorded the death as a suicide. “An autopsy was conducted to determine the cause of death,” Blitar Police detective and crime unit chief Adj. Comr. Sodik Efendi told The Jakarta Post, Tuesday.

Isnan wrote in a note left on the bedroom wall, “I love my daughter and granddaughter”, and expressed his wish to be “buried in front of the house next to the lemon tree”.

The police said they received testimony from Isnan’s older brother that before the incident, Isnan had said he lacked dignity in front of his wife after Tatik had returned home for good. Tatik had spent many years working as a housemaid in Singapore.  

“According to his brother, Isnan said he’d rather end his life than get a divorce,” Sodik said.

The couple’s neighbors also said they had often heard them quarrelling for the past few months including before Tatik took their granddaughter to school.

“Almost every day Bu Tatik got angry at Pak Isnan because he did not have a job,” Widiastuti, a neighbor, told the Post.

While Tatik was in Singapore, Isnan was also unemployed. He took care of their child, Vita, who was only a toddler when Tatik left to begin work abroad. Isnan remained a stay-at-home father until Vita became a teenager and got married when she was only 15.

According to Widiastuti, Tatik would come home once every two to three years for only two weeks to a month at the longest.

Two years ago, Vita got divorced and a year later she followed in her mother’s footsteps, working as a migrant housemaid in Hong Kong. After her daughter’s departure, Tatik returned to the family for good.

“Pak Isnan actually asked Bu Tatik for quite some time to come home and not to return to Singapore. He might have been sad that Vita married early and then divorced, and later went to Hong Kong,” Widiastuti said.

Tatik told the police that before leaving the house she had told Isnan she wanted to settle their problems for good when she returned home.

The hardships Tatik’s family has endured are among the many domestic challenges faced by the thousands of migrant worker families in Blitar. The regency sends the second-highest number of migrant workers in East Java after Banyuwangi.

The Blitar Manpower Agency has recorded an increasing number of migrant workers. As of early November, 3,908 locals had gone abroad in search of work this year, an increase from 3,827 over the same period last year. Throughout 2018, 4,320 locals sought employment abroad, of which more than 82 percent were women.

Sulis, the head of Pertakina, an organization that works to empower migrant workers and their families, said the figure was in fact much higher than the manpower agency’s monitoring could determine, leading to many broken families and early marriages among children. 

“There are also illegal and semi-illegal channels. These are not monitored,” said Sulis, who is also a former migrant worker.

She said the decision of women to leave their families to support them by working abroad often led to domestic problems that ended in divorce.

The children of these families are frequently married at a young age and when they also have children, further problems emerge. In most cases, the young families are not prepared to bear the economic burdens and handle other domestic problems.

The young wives then usually follow their mothers’ path and become migrant workers, and not long after their marriages end in divorce.

“It’s a vicious cycle,” said Sulis, calling on others to help bring an end to the cycle that entraps migrant workers and their families.

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