My yima (my mother’s sister) was like a mother to me.
Today is supposed to be her 69th birthday. She passed away peacefully two weeks ago.
Just three months ago, my yima was still playing with my son. Then a series of illnesses took her away in 61 days. 61 days is an unfairly short amount of time. Nobody could understand why. Not her, not us, not even the doctors.
I know I cannot turn back time, even though I desperately wish I could. I was at her home and the hospital every day, irrationally clinging to the hope of more time together—but it was not meant to be. Still, I can write to remember and honor her. Every time I miss her, I’m glad I have these memories to hold onto.
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I was born the youngest of three siblings, three years after my parents quit their jobs and started their own business. While they were working long hours, often into the night and skipping dinner, my yima was looking after me. She took care of me from the time I was a month old until I went to university. That’s about 20 years. 20 out of my 32 years so far. When I was a naive little boy, I felt closer to her than my mother because I was with her more than my parents. I lived and slept in her house for most of those 20 years. As I grew older, I spent my day at her house and went home only to sleep. I always dreaded the telephone ring at her house at about eight in the evening, a sign that my parents were coming to pick me up.
I wasn’t the easiest kid to look after. While my parents are the strictest disciplinarians, the bad cops, my yima was the lenient guardian, the good cop. She always let me have things my way. Being the smart(ass) kid I was, I knew I could get whatever I wanted whenever I threw tantrums. Her parenting probably influenced my parenting. Nowadays, my son does that to me and helps me understand how hard it must have been to raise little me. Although I developed a terrible temper in my teenage years, my yima’s kind temperament eventually helped me get rid of it.
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Some of my favorite memories are the little mundane things my yima did for me. Here’s one. For many years, my yima would wake me up slightly after five in the morning to get ready for school. I would wake up, walk to the living room, and sleep on the sofa. She would make me breakfast—a cup of hot milk or milo and, in a small transparent plastic bag, two slices of bread with butter and sugar—and nudge me to brush my teeth. After I finally defeated the Z-monster, washed up, and caught the bus, I would fall asleep again on the bus. Surprisingly, I never missed my stop. But I don’t think she ever stopped worrying that I might.
Maybe I have a knack for buses. When I was 10, my little cousin was born at a hospital far away from my yima’s house. For some reason, I knew the route to the hospital and took my yima there on a public bus. She was amazed and kept repeating the story for the next 20 years.
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When I was in Nan Hua Primary School, my yima worked at the canteen for a few years. It was like having a cheat code. When I forgot to get my parents to sign a consent form, I’d run to the canteen to get my yima to sign it for me. When the queue was long during recess, I’d walk to the back of the canteen to get a bowl of fried nuggets and seaweed chicken from my yima.
Ever the Singaporean son, my parents signed me up for numerous tuition classes. My yima would bring me around Singapore for the classes. Bukit Panjang. Bugis. Bishan. I remember an embarrassing moment when we were waiting for the bus. Thinking my yima was on my right, I turned and hugged her. She was on my left, and I hugged a stranger. Thankfully, I was probably around seven or eight years old. The stranger politely smiled at me and left.
At some point, I was fed up with being forced to study so much. I had tuition classes in the morning and school in the afternoon. I was only 11. On one fine day, after the morning classes, I decided I’d had enough and refused to go to school. My yima, the ever-kind person, tried persuading me gently. My mum wasn’t having it. She left my dad to manage their shop and rushed over to my yima’s house. I locked myself in the master bedroom, thinking I had managed to escape her. Silly me didn’t realize they would have the keys, and I promptly got whipped with the rattan cane. But I still had my master plan. I was trying to delay until I missed the school bus. Because if I missed it, I wouldn’t have to go to school, right? My mum hauled me out to the street to hail a taxi. I even hugged a tree, trying to resist her. In the end, I still went to school, but with tears on my face and scratches on my forearms.
For a few consecutive years, one of my elder siblings or cousins would take the Primary School Leaving Examinations (PSLE) and apply for a secondary school. We would flip through the book of secondary schools and look at the minimum score required to enter various schools. We often talked about a prestigious secondary school in Singapore. The Chinese High School. “The” with a capital T. None of them made it there. Then I turned twelve, the age for PSLE, and an opportunity showed up. The Chinese High School was going to have an open house. Why not go take a look? Because my parents were busy with their business, my cousin (my yima’s daughter) brought me there. The campus is so huge that we got lost. We barely made it past the car park. We were about to give up finding where the activities were when someone showed us the way. I cannot remember anything else about the open house, except that I applied for direct school admission. That eventually got me into The Chinese High School (which was renamed to Hwa Chong Institution the year I entered). It was there when I first lost an aunt (my yima’s sister). Because I was studying for my exams, my family didn’t want to tell me about her terminal illness. I woke up one morning, on a mattress in my yima’s living room, to be told she had passed away. Many years later, my yima helped raise another cousin, who also went to Hwa Chong Institution. My yima fought to stay alive until two days after her A-level exams.
While my parents were keeping their business afloat, my yima supervised my studies. She attended all my parent-teacher meetings. Her daughter would follow along because my yima couldn’t understand or speak English fluently. They did this all the way until I was 18 when I completed my studies in Singapore. A few times when my yima had to look after my baby cousin, only her daughter went. My teachers were puzzled to see her because she is only a few years older than me. Thankfully, I did alright in school and the teachers didn’t have much to comment on.
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In Singapore, we like to say that it takes a kampong (village in Malay) to support someone through National Service. My yima was my kampong. She made sure I had everything I needed, or she would bring me to Beach Road to buy whatever I needed. She washed all my dirty, stinky uniforms when I was too tired to do anything after my military training. She cooked for me after my overnight duties. She sewed on my badges and altered my uniform pants when they were too long, with her own sewing machine. She pressed all my uniforms until sharp creases ran down the middle of my trousers and sleeves. I’m pretty sure my military trainers were impressed by how crisp and professional my uniforms looked. Up until today, I still iron my formal attires until there are similar creases.
She cooked for her family and me for as long as I can remember. I grew up loving her chill prawns, which my wife and I could never recreate. When my grandmother (her mother) passed away, she cooked for all extended families. My yima is the eldest daughter among nine siblings. She cooked for all of us, our partners, and our children. When my wife and I had COVID last year, she cooked five- to six-course meals and had her daughter deliver them, food in nicely packed bento boxes and soup in a thermal flask, to us. She only stopped cooking this year when her knees were giving her issues. She took good care of us, up and down the family tree.
I was lucky to be able to study abroad because my parents worked tirelessly to support me financially. Though my yima wasn’t as well-off, she supported me in many other ways. She would buy many things that were hard to find in the UK, such as Asian cooking sauces, and get her daughter to post them to me. International deliveries back then were ridiculously expensive but she wanted to make sure I ate well, especially since I couldn’t get her home-cooked food there. While I was thousands of miles away from home, home never felt too far away.
After I graduated, I was busy with my own life, starting my family, training for triathlons, and jetting around the world with my remote job at Buffer. I was too occupied for my own good and didn’t visit her as much. But she was always there for me and my family. After my wife gave birth to our son, my yima made sure we had fresh meat and vegetables at home for our confinement meals. Once our son could eat solid food, she went to the wet market to buy fresh fish for him, even though her knees hurt every step she took. Whenever our son fell sick, she would advise me on what to do. When I made the effort to drop by, she would cook for me.
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My yima was obsessed with feng shui. When I moved into my new place, she bought me several auspicious items to place in the house. Before our renovation started, she sprinkled salt and rice grains throughout the house. I cannot remember the purpose but I do remember being so annoyed by how hard it was to clean up afterwards. I never understood why she was so superstitious but I knew she meant well and went along with her wishes. Reflecting back on her life now, she was the kindest person I ever knew and yet stage-four cancer still came knocking on her door. If I were her, I would also have done anything and everything possible to boost my luck.
Given what had happened to my yima, I would complain that life is unfair. But I can hear her saying, “It’s ok.” That was her attitude to life. When I whined that someone had taken my toys, she would tell me, “It’s ok. You can play with other toys.” When I did terribly in school and was upset, she would tell me, “It’s ok. You can try harder next time.” When I was too busy to visit her, she would tell me, “It’s ok. Do whatever you need to do.” Life dealt her a tough hand but she said “It’s ok” and faced it bravely. She fought a metastasized stage-four breast cancer for eight years and kept it well under control. When her kidneys started to fail, her doctor told us she might only have a fortnight left and to get our family members to visit her. Miraculously, her kidneys recovered to the point that her oncologist resumed her cancer treatment for another three months. And in her final days, even though she was hospitalized for being unresponsive, she gradually moved her feet, then her arms, then her body until she eventually opened her eyes, surprising the doctors and nurses who were looking after her.
For the last three months, I have been overwhelmed by grief and sadness. I have collapsed on the bathroom floor to cry. I have wept quietly on the living room sofa when my son was asleep in my room. But now I can hear her telling me, “It’s ok. I’m watching over you all from heaven now.”
Happy birthday, yima.
I miss you.
💔