Mum passed away 2 years ago, she grew up in Hougang & ended up touching the lives of people now all over the world

Mum lived three lives, concurrently, right to the very end.

There was her family life, her work life, and her church life; and in all three, she developed these really deep relationships that spanned multiple decades, based on helping people through some of the toughest or most consequential parts of their lives.

When she passed two years ago, my sister and I (who she raised, made sure had good home-cooked meals, did okay in school, and got to go to university), marvelled at the depth and breadth of those relationships, how any one of these lives was already as fully featured as any one of us had, let alone all three.

Kept extended families together

Mum came from a large Teochew family in Hougang, the second youngest of seven siblings.

From her teenage years, she played surrogate parent to her elder siblings’ children; she was the one who knew everyone’s phone number, their kids' birthdays, and who needed some help to make the end of the month.

And it wasn’t just for her siblings. She held the web of the extended family together, of course, in conjunction with others; it was not and could not have been an individual effort.

In the years since her passing, I’ve grown used to wondering how she did it.

Because she didn’t just do it for her side of the family, she did it for dad’s too, a large, complicated family, centred in KL but had roots up and down the peninsula.

At Chinese New Year, Christmas, and major school holidays, she made sure we gathered in KL, cooking mighty meals, and braving the wild North-South highway too.

Through family kerfuffles, where some of my aunts might not speak to each other due to simmering feuds, all my dad’s sisters recognised her effort: she was, and to a certain extent still is, every one of my father’s sisters’ favourite sister.

And if keeping two extended families together was the main part of a social life in addition to raising two kids, and working, I’d say that was enough.

But that was just one of her lives.

No chill

At the funeral, they streamed in day after day, hour after hour.

My sister and I took turns to sit with family and friends; we let them console us, and in turn, console themselves.

Her friends share story after story of how mum, a human resources executive for over 40 years, recruited them, helped them grow in their careers, find their place, and then move on to the right jobs.

But she would counsel others as well, friends would refer friends, or their young adult children entering the workforce. Sometimes, just people who had found her through some contrivance or other.

She would go through their resumes with a fine-tooth comb, sharing with them what she, as a professional, was looking for and refining them, preparing and coaching them for interviews, and the work lives they would lead beyond that.

Her family didn’t come from the professional corporate world, and she fought bitter battles to learn its ways.

She knew that people like her younger self needed mentors like her older self to survive in it, and made sure they had it.

A friend said he had never known a time in his adult life when she had not advised him; he was originally just some guy, an acquaintance had asked her to glance through his resume and give some pointers.

She would end up being his friend for almost 15 years.

Nearly half a century of relationships poured into several dozen meetings at a three-day funeral, with many messages from across the globe lamenting that they could not attend.

Not to mention the students she mentored or the career counselling work she did (a one-woman SkillsFuture coach).

And that’s just the stuff she did outside work hours.

A fully realised life.

One of three.

To give and not count the cost

Mum grew up in the surprisingly Catholic-dense Hougang of the 1950s (she said she recognised Ng Kok Song from way back then, although I never got to find out if she was right).

She found great solace in Mass, but mum worked at one end of the CBD that didn’t have a train, and the closest church was on the other, making attendance an impracticality within the confines of a lunch break.

She had a car; she could have just driven herself over, but she recognised that there were others like her, and together they would form what is now the Catholic Prayer Society.

The CPS arranges for Mass to be celebrated all around the CBD, catering to Catholic professionals, and is now quite well established, but in the early days, rooms had to be found to hold the services, available priests had to be found and ferried to and from churches.

Mum did the ferrying and, in a way that was very typical of her, found a solution to a problem that benefited many at the cost of her own convenience.

In later years, she mentored many novice Catholics into the faith, taking as much pride in the ones that got baptised as the ones that did not.

She recognised that faith was a journey, and while the preference is to arrive sooner, you can get there too early.

We sat and heard the testimony of many whom she had helped, her various goddaughters, whom she guided in the faith, those whose own faith had been strengthened by the society she helped develop.

Dozens again, another half century.

A life well lived.

One of three.

And to receive in return

The end is never neat, never clean, never easy; a tale for another time.

But in the final year, she struggled greatly, but was buoyed by the numerous friends and family who sought to make her contribution in their lives known, to make sure she knew what good work she had done for them.

Every day they called, checking in on her, praying for and with her, and comforted her greatly at the end, rallying to her when she needed them, something for which my family is eternally grateful.

At the end, she knew she was loved.

To have it all

I wrote this for International Women’s Day, but in truth, it is a rudderless story.

I suppose this could have been a story of how difficult it is for women to have it all, and mum didn’t; she sacrificed much of her own life to all this and raised my sister and me, so it felt trite and untrue.

She was ‘just’ a remarkable woman, one that it felt appropriate to pay tribute to, on a day where we should all celebrate remarkable women.

She was one of many.

(I feel obliged to add, Dad doesn’t feature much in this story because it's not about him, not because he was absent or something. Sorry dad!)