Diana Cheung Sheen Tai, lady in red, d.
4 December 2018. Aunty Diana, Tai Por, Gou Tai Por. Reproduced below are mostly
Jon’s memories of her, adapted by me from his eulogy for her.
***
To some, Tai Por was a glamourous air
stewardess with the new and impossibly expensive Malayan Airways. She would
stay with the airline until it became Singapore Airlines, something she would talk about with quiet pride – she was one of the alumni, had been given shares
in the company. When we celebrated her ninetieth birthday earlier this year (she
was older than that, but after the Second World War, people lied about their
ages so they could go back to school), she left instructions that after she
passed away, she was to be dressed in an outfit she had tailored from cloth
printed with the SIA logo. The cloth had the SIA logo printed in mustard yellow on a dark blue background, and had been given to her by a regular passenger; he
was someone important in the company. She was also given a matching baby
romper; it was similarly navy blue and had the SIA logo printed on it in mustard yellow.
She gave it to Daniel for his first Christmas. It smelled of mothballs, and was
in pristine condition even after what must have been decades. She never married
and never had children. I washed the romper, and Daniel fought it off on his
first wear. It was only when we celebrated her last birthday that we learnt how
special that outfit was. I’ve now packed it away carefully for my brother and
sister-in-law.
To mah-mah, my father-in-law’s mother,
she was an aunt, and a companion for many years of their lives. They were
together, in their teens, during the Second World War; together they became
young women as the Malayan Emergency and communist struggles offered no respite
from the instability of the years preceding them, and together they saw
Singapore achieve independence. All that, and the death of mah-mah’s husband
from what relatives later thought must have been internal injuries sustained
from being beaten by the Kempeitai. Together, they grew old, Yee Por making a
trio, in a house in Thomson where for years Jon and his family, and later me,
then Daniel, then Andrew, ate countless meals and watched bad Sunday night TV.
To others, she was an active old lady,
an inspiration to make the best of your golden years. She insisted on exercising
at Thomson Community Centre, and later on a nearby park, every morning except
for Sunday morning, at 6am. As children, when Jon and his second brother were sent for “holidays
from parents” with mah-mah, Tai Por would take both of them to the
community centre with her. She was active in church, and on the Sunday mornings
that they stayed with mah-mah, she would take them to the Cantonese service at
her church, where they understood very little of what was being said, but which practice still managed to play a part in instilling in Jon the discipline of going to church every
Sunday possible, and wearing shoes to church, as a mark of respect for God. Later,
when he travelled to the US for summer music school, when he went to India on
exchange in university, she would check that he attended church regularly, and
was reading his Bible and the Our Daily Bread which she gave him.
Tai Por drove a stick shift car well
into her eighties. When she stopped driving, the traffic police sent her what
she joked was a “thank-you” card. It was the same one we all got that year, for
being demerit point free drivers, and I remember the chuckle we had at dinner
when she whipped it out. You can’t get demerit points if you’re not driving. She
played with Daniel and Andrew, sitting on her chair in the living room in the
house in Thomson, rolling a ball for them to roll back to her. She and mah-mah
propped one end of a board up against a stack of newspapers for them to send toy
cars shooting down, watching over them and laughing at their delight, allowing
me to watch whichever never-ending Taiwanese drama was being shown again on
Channel 8 in fascinated horror.
She was quiet about the important things
in life; it was through how Tai Por conducted herself that she taught others the most.
She praised the Lord in everything. She loved Jon’s family more than she loved
herself. She prayed without ceasing, and was stoic through life’s challenges.
She never wasted anything – mou sai, mou sai, was a favourite saying of hers.
She was humble, truthful, and a careful steward of whatever God had blessed her
with. And towards the end of her life, she showed us what it meant to be ready
to go, having absolute faith in God and where she was going after she passed
on, ready to account.
There are many other stories about the
life Tai Por lived and all she did for others that are not mine to tell. Some
may never see the light of day and die with those who know – secret resentments,
lost love, hurt and bitterness she bit her lip to keep from expressing, to keep
the peace. She was human, after all. But her life was an example of the peace a
life of faith in God can bring, how His faithfulness to His character as
revealed to us in the Bible truly prevails and transforms.
Take my hand, precious Lord,
lead me home.
***
I always found it strange when I saw
people posting on social media that they had run “in honour of” someone, or
something. Save for a precious few who I could tell really meant it, for the
most part, it either felt like people didn’t really know what it meant and they
were just jumping on the bandwagon, or it was just a subtle form of humble-bragging
(e.g. I ran this marathon in honour of my new pair of Nike shoes!) (okay, that’s
an extreme example, but you get what I mean? (I hope.)).
Tai Por was admitted to the Assisi Hospice
about 3-4 weeks out from Sunday’s half, having been in the community hospital
from sometime towards the end of September. She had advanced lung cancer, but
declined treatment, and still survived much longer than the doctors thought she
would. I am ashamed to admit that when she was first moved to the hospice, I
selfishly fretted about whether I would still be able to train properly for the
half and whether our family holiday would go off without a hitch. I worried
about how tired Jon was from work. I worried about whether I would be able to
finish and handover whatever work I had to before we went. I worried, and fretted,
and was anxious.
But the visits to Tai Por at the hospice
were warm and cheerful; I may have worried and fretted and mentally made plans to give
certain things up or have to make alternative arrangements, but I refused to let all that get in the way of enjoying those last few visits with the family. We celebrated
Christmas early with chocolate cake and a tiny Christmas tree that fit on the table
that could be rolled over her bed for her meals. The boys were always happy to
see her, mah-mah and Yee Por, and she always told Jon God loves you.
Before she got too weak to do so, she would try to sing her favourite song God
Will Take Care of You with Jon and Joel. Somewhere along the way, it seems
like it was so long ago now, I realised that she would have prayed that she
would be a blessing to us all up to the very end – and so she was. She passed away the Tuesday before the half, when I
was tapering, and was cremated on Friday, which meant I was able to legitimately
take a day off work after having already taken the day off on Tuesday because I
was sick.
(I know this makes me sound very callous
and self-absorbed, but hear me out.)
I started thinking about what it would
mean to be doing a race “in honour of” someone, because if there was anyone who
deserved to be honoured, it was Tai Por. And I realised that to really honour
someone or something, you had to approach whatever you were doing with the
right attitude – it couldn’t be about you, it had to be about them. You couldn’t
do whatever you had set out to do “in honour of” them with the ultimate aim,
whether consciously or subconsciously, of being able to brag about what you achieved,
or to better someone. You had to do it just because you had to, wanted to, make it all about remembering them.
Of course, I very quickly realised how
unworthy I was of running on Sunday “in honour of” Tai Por, and so I decided to
honour her memory in some other way (well, this post). I was thankful that my prayers and what I
believed to be Tai Por’s prayer to be a blessing to the end of her life were answered, and
I was assured again that God cares about my silly, trivial little worries. I
ran on Sunday with all that in mind, and – that was that. My previous post on
Instagram sums it up in a nutshell. Also, I actually knew all along that I was
never going to PR on Sunday – it was foolishness to think it was possible,
eight weeks after my goal race for 2018 and a mere seven weeks on a totally new
method of training.
***
On re-reading my previous
post on What I Think About When I Think About Running, it dawned on me that I hadn’t answered my
question of why I continued training so hard. Maybe it’s that I couldn’t answer
it at that point, because the answer was quite painful to admit to myself.
2018 was the year I was really humbled
by running – I realised that I had been relying on what was probably more beginner’s
luck than anything, and from 2013 to boot, to try to PR (2015 and 2017 don’t
really count because hormones, and children younger than they are now). I didn’t,
or maybe I just couldn’t, until the boys were a bit older, admit that I would
need to commit a lot more time and emotion to it if I wanted to improve further.
Like I said before, I don’t think I can give a super amount of time and emotion
to running even now because I’m not prepared to make the sacrifice of getting a
live-in helper. But I think I can afford to give it a bit more time and emotion
now, and I’m already excited for 2019.
So that’s why I have stuck with running,
I think. Because it has humbled me, and I believe will continue to keep me
humble – there are so many things I thought I knew but actually don’t because I
haven’t actually put them in practice – and a little humility never hurt
anyone. I’m glad for it, and hope it will translate to how I approach other
parts of my life. I’ll say it again, God really knows the best way to teach
each of us His lessons for us.
Blessed Christmas.
