Monday 10 December 2018

In Memory Of



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. 

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