2000 was the year in which I :
 
*  graduated
 
*  backpacked to Europe with Joyce
 
*  started work
 
*  acquired my first handphone
 
*  subscribed to my first credit card (at the behest of a colleague who wanted to get a bonus for introducing “friends” to the bank)
 
*  started driving (to my embarrassment, a second-hand Suzuki Swift GTI complete with “Christmas lights” – a mismatch given my personality – teasingly labelled the “bengmobile” by my colleagues)
 
This is also the year in which the mother of a kid (of course no longer a kid in 2000) I used to tutor passed away from cancer.  I gave tuition to the kid in 1996, after my battalion stood down in my final year of NS, but I decided to drop it at the end of 1996 after half a year in university because I was too busy on campus.  But the kid, his mother (Mdm Loh) and I always kept in touch from time to time.
 
About July 2000 I received a distress call from Mdm Loh.  She needed someone to help her son with his “O” levels and I obliged.
 
Things were going OK until one Saturday afternoon about two months later.  Mdm Loh called and said that she had been diagnosed with advanced cancer.  Between sobs, she asked me to help look out for her son as he grew up.  I told her I would.  My family offered to put her son up at our home while she was at hospital but she said her relatives would take care of him.
 
Mdm Loh pulled through the operation and for a while looked like she would recover.  She even made me promise to invite her to my wedding.  (She needn’t have asked).
 
For the next two months I visited her in hospital about every other day after classes.  I also brought my girlfriend’s Chinese pastors to visit and pray for her but sadly she declined to accept Christ.
 
One day in October when I went to visit Mdm Loh at the hospice, I was told that she had been discharged and had left for China.  I’m not sure what “left for China” means, but I never got to see her again.
 
I shall always remember the kindness which Mdm Loh had showed to me.  She had treated me as more than a tutor, more than a person you pay to produce results.  I am also moved by her fierce love for her children.
 
This posting is dedicated to her memory.

(Mdm Loh had difficulty talking immediately after her operation, so she wrote what she wanted to say on paper)