A Schoolmate’s Demise

This morning when I woke up, I thought of a schoolmate during my pre-uni days. 

I searched on Facebook for her and found that she was not on the social media platform anymore.

I thought it strange so I tried googling for her.

An obituary came up on Death Kopitiam Singapore, a Facebook page putting out obituaries of Singaporeans who have passed away. At first, I thought it was a joke.

I read the comments and knew it was for real. She passed away in March last year.

“Oh my god” filled my mind. 

We were in the same school. Many people felt we looked similar although I didn’t think so. Our similarities were limited to us having long hair, being petite and had similar-sounding abbreviated names. 

I was in the Arts class while she was in Commerce. However, I was more inclined to hang out with her class as our frequency was closer, compared to my classmates who had superior English. 

She was a popular and outgoing girl. A guy who had a crush on me told me he met her at a pub with eight guys. He sounded very impressed with how popular she was among guys.

She had always been interested in modelling and being an actress. She spent $400 to have her modelling pictures taken professionally. Natural looking and nicely taken indeed. She was a contestant in a Channel 5 talent scout show whose name I can’t recall. She was on The Pyramid Game as a contestant as well. 

After A levels, she went to Australia for further studies.

The next time I saw her was on a Chinese evening paper, among interviewees who auditioned for some roles. The report made her qualifications sound impressive and the reporter thought she was Diane Ser’s lookalike. 

I thought it sounded promising. 

Eventually, she landed some calefare roles  on Channel 5 and 8.

Then her father passed away in the Nicoll Highway incident. She was filmed grieving at the site and throwing a bouquet of flowers into the site where her father was supposed to be on the national TV.

Some celebrities were filmed visiting her to give her emotional support.

I knew it was not easy but I thought she should do fine.

On and off, I would check out her Facebook and other social media platform/s that she was on, to see how the girl whom I was once associated with was getting on. 

Once, I found her taking selfies with exaggerated smiles with a male companion, presumably her husband, and sporting an unflattering short, permed hairdo which aged her.

Another time, she took selfies in a sparsely furnished flat. 

I was quite surprised that she would post those selfies as she used to be highly image-conscious. 

I still remember all her glamour shots. Even a simple home shot would constitute a nice hairdo and complete set of dress-up, down to stylish high-cut boots, and a confident pose. I didn’t know what to make of her strange selfies. 

Perhaps they were signals for help, but no one recognised them. 

I never contacted her as a guy friend had once told me that she didn’t think kindly about me. I didn’t want her to think that I was cozying up to her due to her celebrity status. 

Now I wonder if I could have made a difference if I had linked up with her.

I googled more about her and found more information about her on other platforms. She was also known as The Big Hair Lady.

I never knew she had gone viral with that ridiculous wig. It never came up on any of my social media accounts. 

Someone had asked her what’s with the hair and she said it was an artistic expression. There were videos clips and images of her strolling in a mall and taking MRT rides in that wig.

Comments speculated that she had been depressed due to her father’s passing. It’s been more than 20 years but the loss of your loved ones can never be healed by time.

Her belated news of passing makes me wonder if most of us are carrying great, untold pain while continuing to live. I always thought it’s only me who is living with so much pain within, trying to live as normally as I could. 

20 years of pain she carried with her, and no one knew until she too passed. 

Did she feel utterly alone in the world? Did she have someone to talk to? 

I am only left with questions without answers.

A Cousin's Death

A cousin of mine who was a little older than me passed away today.

It came sudden.

His elder sister had sent him to the hospital yesterday. She thought that it was not serious and had left him in the hospital alone.

The doctor called to inform her that he was too weak to have a CT scan done and they suspected that he had stage-four large intestine cancer as his stomach was bloated.

Today, the doctor called to inform her that he had passed away.

In other words, nobody, including himself, knew he had cancer.

I googled and found that at stage four, a patient's stool would have blood in it and he would lose a lot of weight.

It's sad that he missed all the clues. 

A good friend only discovered she had stage-4B cancer when she found herself bleeding excessively.

Her doctor's prognosis was that she had six months to live but with chemotherapy, she lived on for another 2.5 years.

After my good friend passed away, I often wonder if cancer is lurking in my body. 

(Yes, I know an annual body check-up would be useful in helping to confirm or dispel that thought.)

Einstein rejected an operation to prolong his life as he believed that's Nature's way of calling him home.

I hope I have the courage to say the same thing if it happens to me.

But more often, I wonder why the person who passes isn't me and I wonder when my time will come.

I was sharing with a friend that I feel that I have lived a few lifetimes, more than an average person. I think I am quite done with life. She was stunned for two seconds before laughing out loud. She said, "Indeed. You have gone through many milestones that I have not (and never will)."

I am not sure if it's just me, but after a certain age, I feel that life is not that worth living anymore. I do not know what's there to look forward to - everybody's death? 

Amy Cheung wrote in her book that life is a never-ending journey of saying goodbyes.

People around me start to die in their 40s. It's hard not to wonder when my turn will be.

It also gives me a sense of urgency. My family members and relatives are passing away without knowing God. What frustrates me is that I don't get to see them easily as they live in Malaysia. I can only wait for Chinese New Year to visit them for those brief fleeting minutes. On top of these hurdles, I also need a lot of courage to talk to them about the gospel since we are not close by any measure. The irony is that I am not much of a Christian. I hardly attend church even. I have brought my mother to a traditional presbyterian church but honestly, it bores me to tears. I honestly miss the funky atmosphere and catchy songs of the charismatic churches. I just can't grasp the hymns. Worse, they are in Chinese.

I love Chinese as a language. I even blog in Chinese and prefer Chinese pop songs and ballads, but hymns are really a different story altogether. I was suddenly in the shoes of people whose Chinese is no good. I have to process the word by thinking how to read it and then sing it, a lot quicker than those inept in Chinese no doubt, but I knew it's not me. Chinese should come natural to me, but not in church. I know it's strange but it's what it is.

With all these factors in place, I find myself not enjoying church. I am not sure if I will ever find a church that I can stay at. But I know I have a mission: to share about Christ with my family and relatives.

This year, two cousins and an uncle passed away. Whether they know God, I do not know. I hope to make it certain that they do.

God, help me to share You with my loved ones.

The Devil Comes in the Form of an Angel of Light

I had a friend whom I befriended when I became a parent volunteer.

She seemed like a nice and empathetic person.

She would invite me to be a parent volunteer for various events.

She was also on good terms with other parent volunteers. She would text me pictures of her attending gatherings with the rich tai-tais.

Her children were obedient and outstanding. She would tell me how thrifty and hardworking her daughter was and how promising her son was, and how her son's girlfriend was equally or more promising.

I put my guard down when she often talked about God. 

I started confiding in her. At first, she listened and was empathetic.

Then she started to change.

She would put me down and say that she was saying all the awful things because she cared for me. The typical "If I don't care about you, I wouldn't have bothered saying all these" line.

Almost everything I said was 'wrong'. She literally said, "You are wrong." in our conversation every time we spoke. She would call me and find out what I was up to and used the opportunities to tell me how bad I was doing or what I was doing wrong.

About Covid vaccination

During the Covid period, she supported Iris Koh's anti-vaccine movement. She would bombard me with links, articles. images and videos of how harmful the Covid vaccines were and how they were steps to getting the digital identification implanted in us.

Although I had my own reservations about the vaccination, part of me was influenced by her anti-vaccination ideas, thinking that she and her family also did not take any vaccination.

Over time, I suspected that she had received her vaccination. I asked her a few times but she was evasive. She ignored my question each time I asked if she had gone for the jab. Eventually, when it was made known that all school-going children had to take the jab, I asked her which vaccine did her child take. She said that she and her child took the Non-MRN vaccine.

So much for being anti-vaccine.

About my motherhood

She often criticised me for 'preferring to work'.

She would praise herself for being willing to sacrifice and be a stay-home mother to her children. The result was children who loved her and were obedient to her.

I tried to let her know that it is a privilege to be a stay-home mother and not every woman is so lucky to have a supportive husband who is able to bring home enough bacon for the family.

But no. She insisted that it was a lifestyle choice and I wanted to have a better lifestyle. 

I would tell her that she was lucky to be able to be a housewife only because she met a good man who had a normal idea of a family.

She was not convinced. She tried to tell me that her husband was not perfect either but she was very good at managing the household, that's why her marriage was such a blissful one.

About my income

She had always tried to find out how much I was earning.

Knowing her intention, I did not let her know.

She would assume that I was struggling and keep telling me I should earn more.

She kept saying that her friend who had returned to be an FAJT (Flexi-Adjunct Teacher) was earning $7000. If you are able to catch her drift, she was basically saying that I was earning a lot less than that amount.

After a few consecutive days that she said that, to shut her up, I told her that $7000 was actually not a lot, meaning "I earn more than that, ok!"

She really shut up about my income from then on.

About my job

After the episode about my income, she criticised that I was in my job for the money and not passion.

But soon after, her son who was still an undergrad was offered an assistant-lecturer job. She was raving over how well-paid he was 'just by sitting there'.

I was sarcastic, "Then your son is not in the job for the passion. He's only in it for the money."

Funnily enough, she did not see the elephant in the room. She did not think that it was a problem. 

About my ex-husband

To suggest that I was not a fantastic person, she mentioned that 'many people think that he is a good father'.

Well, by 'a good father', she meant that he was seen picking Baby up after school.

Remembering what Pastor Prince said (When people say 'many people'/'everybody', they mean they themselves, their wife and their dog!), I called her bluff, "I know J was the one who said that because she often talked to him when she met him while waiting to pick up her daughter." 

True enough,. That shut her up.

So basically, her 'many people' referred to herself and one other person.

About my disobedience

She was constantly telling me that she had a relationship with God, and that she was so blessed because she was obedient and did God's will. She told me one day God would question me why I never listen to Him when he had sent her to send His messages.

About my flat

During my renovation, she would criticise everything I bought or did.

In fact, she criticised the flat I bought. She said that she already bought the same kind of flat when she first got married. In case I did not believe her, she showed me a picture of her children in the flat.

Then she said how unsuitable the flat was for me and my mother.

About Coco

Of course. Everybody has an opinion about how lousy a mother I am to Coco. How could she miss that?

One moment, she criticised how permissive I was in Coco's upbringing; another moment, she criticised how controlling I was of Coco, resulting in how Coco had turned out.

Of course, she did not forget to juxtapose her daughter of the same age, but incredibly amazing, with Coco. 

About the ID

When I had doubts about the ID I was deliberating over, she dismissed my worries and told me that I was being paranoid and overly suspicious. "He is just trying to do your business" "He is not a scammer". When things turned out to be what I had suspected ie. the ID being a scammer, she immediately changed her tune, "I told you to stop hiring him already." 

When I reminded her that she was the one who asked me to hire him, she retorted ludicrously, "Now you are blaming me?"

About my renovation

When I said that I was going to install various smart or electrical devices, she warned me that my electrical bill was going to be "very high". I became worried, so I went online to ask fellow homeowners if that was true.

One of the homeowners commented, "I think your friend is jealous of you."

That jolted me into thinking why she had been saying all the awful things and finding every opportunity to belittle me.

About my problems

When I told her I broke down due to the renovation, she actually said, "You are a mess." and "You are too weak."

I decided that this person could not be the friend that she claimed she was. A friend does not hit you down when you are down. I also felt that she could not be of God. God is love. This person pretended to love but turned it into a sword to assassinate you when you were not looking.

I started to put up my guard and I was ready to block her on my phone.

I also started to retort her. I would also use "You are wrong" to let her have a taste of her own medicine. 

But I got tired of being nasty. I decided to block her. 

As I am typing this, I realised that the words to describe her was 'a hypocrite'.

I am glad I shut her out of my life.