Love writes the best obituaries, I, Ong Peck Lye

Love writes the best obituaries. The Obit of Mr Ong Peck Lye was a beautiful poem and gives us the arc from cradle to grave, illustrating a life of personal tensions, contradictions, regrets, and frustrations.

It was beautiful in all its imperfections. It was so beautiful precisely because it was written by the love of his second [Samseng] son, Ong Tiong Yeow.

In fact, everyone should write an obituary; by a husband for his wife, a daughter for her father, an owner for his/her pet, a mother to her son, and a friend to another.

Only our closest loved ones will present us as who we really are. They see the beauty in our imperfections and present those flaws in ways we would never be able to. We are only a better person in life because of their love towards us.

Mr Ong Peck Lye’s obit was written in the first person by a third person.

Death, our death in general, is an event that will happen, an anticipated event of the future. It hangs on the horizon and hovers as a possibility. Thus, death as a future encounter is feared and avoided both for its mystery and for its price. The futurity of death lends it its mystery; its disruptiveness lends it its [economic, industrial, social and/ or political] price.

We delay our conversations on death. We avoid death by referring to it as a third person, or through a third person. This has to change.

We need to reclaim ownership of our own death. My death is mine; we need to embrace it, discuss it and love it.

More importantly, the obit moved many because it lend voice to a rationality that death is happening in the now. It exists in the public space as an ‘everyday’, ‘familiar’ presence.

As the obit clearly illustrates through the last stanza – “I dared to live and now I dare to die.” – death should be seen as a presence that makes possible the very intelligibility of life, showcasing its beauty but also exposing warts and all. The obit of Mr Ong Peck Lye achieves that perfectly.

Death defines life, and the death of one Ong Peck Lye and the obit written for him illuminates his life and speaks to ours powerfully. To be defined by death is also to be captured by it. It is all around, inescapable and personal.

The Singaporean idea of death should thus embrace an intimate, identifiable first-person coexistence and connection with death. Death should not haunt, it should love.

In the case of death, familiarity does not breed contempt. The fear and uncertainty arising from separation and distance do.

The obit of Mr Ong Peck Lye turned what was denied and feared into something familiar and in so doing bridged the divide and transformed the relationship between the living and the dead.

The abyss between life and death is not insurmountable as Mr Ong Pek Lye and his samseng son have so graciously shown us. Thank you, Mr Ong.

𝐏𝐡𝐨𝐭𝐨 𝐜𝐫𝐞𝐝𝐢𝐭: 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐒𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐢𝐭𝐬 𝐓𝐢𝐦𝐞𝐬, 𝟏𝟐 𝐉𝐮𝐧𝐞 𝟐𝟎𝟏𝟔

𝐑𝐞𝐚𝐝 𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐞: https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/samseng-son-pens-heartfelt-poem-as-obituary-for-father