A Mother's Day

Yesterday was a special day meant for all mothers.

A day to celebrate and mothers to be acknowledged for being angels to their children... besides being a wife, a daughter, someone's best friend.


The Newspaper

Guess not all mothers are able to celebrate it when I read the news in the Sunday Times yesterday. This mother lost both her husband and her daughter in a motorcycle accident.

Riding pillion with her 70 year-old father, a retiree, who was sending his daughter to work in the morning. They both did not reach their destination when their motorcyle collided with a lorry at 6:30am.

The daughter, a mother herself with 4 children did not get to celebrate it with her own children either. A breadwinner to the children and aging parents, this single mother was providing for the whole family, working overtime on a weekend.

Pictures of the distraught mother and both the deceased accompanied the report. So unfortunate... was my thought after reading it yesterday as I turned another page.


Closer Than Expected

Today, I realized that the daughter was actually working in the same company as I am. In fact the same department after the merging, but on different floors.

I have not personally met her, nor have I noticed seeing her around before, but the email from HR announcing her untimely death shocked me.

It is just unthinkable that within a blink of an eye, one's life can drastically change... or end.

You read the news, you see the picture of someone unknown to you, you think it was just an unfortunate news, until you realize it was closer than you think. Just unthinkable.

I had lost a few friends myself...


I Say A Prayer

One was a good friend from the army when I was serving national service in Seletar Camp. I used to hitch a ride home on his scooter quite often, since we both lived in Tampines.

A few years after we completed our service and went our separate ways, I learnt from an army buddy about his death from an accident while riding his scooter.

A group of us went to his wake but did not get a chance to see him one last time. He was a good person, a gentle soul who excepted everyone for who they are. He was his mother's favorite son.

He was a good friend to me and I will say a prayer whenever I remember him.


A Good Friend...

Another was a colleague from my second job. She was heading the IQC department. A feisty lady who stood for her right and nothing less.

Unknown to her, nor the doctors who had treated her for her symptoms, she succumbed to what it seemed to be the elusive lung cancer while she was carrying her unborn child for 8 months.

Both mother and child died. Her husband hugged and cried on my shoulders for a moment in distraught when I came to her wake. He told me that she regarded me as one of her good friends who excepted her for who she was, knowing that she was a difficult person.

Till this day, I just cannot comprehend the magnitude of pain he must have felt to have lost both his futures and where to start picking up the pieces.


My Resolve

That is why, I always make it a point to spend as much time with my family and parents. I make it a point to say goodbye and see the last of my son's glimpse as he goes down the stairs every morning.

I will look at my wife's face and smile as she waves me goodbye, and as I go down the stairs myself to go to work.

I will look at my parents face bidding me goodbye as I leave their home and turn the corner for the lift down.

Just because, if fate has it... if anything were to happen to any of us, at least we had seen each other's last smiles and we left each other in peaceful terms.

That is enough for me... for we can always plan, but The Almighty decides.