A love story

I would like to tell you a story. It's a love story based on real events. You may have heard most of it before, and I may not have all my facts straight, but the sentiments are real. It's not Hollywood blockbuster material - there are no car chases or explosions - but I feel that it is a story worth telling.

Once upon a time, there lived a girl named Mildred, but all her friends called her Meow because she's just the kind of person who would embrace a nickname like that. She was born 40+ years ago in Singapore with a couple of physical problems. Firstly, she was born with extremely poor eyesight, with tunnel vision so severe that she is legally blind. Secondly, her kidneys weren't quite working properly.

On the other hand, she was blessed with an even temper, a keen intelligence and a gentle but slightly wicked sense of humour. I imagine that she had a pretty normal childhood where she did not let her physical problems get in the way. I'm sure she went through the normal teenager issues of making friends, trying to get good grades and basically growing up. She does, however, get annoyed rather easily at what she considers improper behaviour. For example, she once recalled to me that when she was 18 and studying for her 'A'-levels, she got distinctly irritated at her neighbour's bratty 7-year-old boy who was playing next door and making so much noise.

Time passed, and Meow continued to grow up. At some point she picked up a Master's degree from the United States, spent some time teaching English as a second language to non-native speakers, and just lived a normal life with grace and integrity. Oh, and that bratty neighbour's kid? His name is Drew, and he grew up too. After spending much of his schooling life in Australia, he returned to Singapore in his late teens or early twenties, and got reacquainted with Meow, the girl next door. I don't know the details of how they got together, but I imagine they bumped into each other around the neighbourhood, and a couple of casual conversations later there were sparks flying and angelic choirs in the background.

I met Drew in the army when I went back for 3 months to complete my disrupted service. We shared an interest in pop culture, computer games and the tendency to make completely unrealistic, grandiose plans, so we became friends pretty much immediately. We also talked about relationships sometimes (hey, guys do that too). Drew probably didn't realize it, but whenever he talked about the girl he was dating, who was 11 years older and blind, even then he was giving off subtle cues that he loved her and treasured her; he knew that he was on to a good thing and he was not going to let her go no matter what. Eventually we introduced everybody to each other, and that's how Meow, Drew, my then-girlfriend and now-wife Bernice, and I first became friends. But to be honest, we weren't really close at that point.

Time continued to pass, and life continued to move on. A few years later, Drew and Meow got moved to Sydney and got married. Having never been to Sydney, Bern and I took a holiday there and met up with them to just have a nice, relaxing time with nice people and pleasant conversation. It was so much fun spending time with them that we did it again the next year. And the next. I recall helping them move apartments once (and by "we" I mean me). This involved Drew and me lugging a full-sized bed and mattress into a small elevator, down the street, and into another small elevator, whereupon we realised that we should probably have unscrewed the legs of the bed first. When they moved to Perth, we naturally continued our yearly pilgrimage, staying over at their house like the couple of leeches we are.

It was just fun. We spent hours and days just sitting around the living room and chatting about issues big and small. We ate Domino's pizza and Hog's Breath mega-cut steaks. We embarked on TV series marathons, watching back-to-back-to-back episodes of Veronica Mars into the wee hours of the night. We played board games. We chuckled over how Meow had to fight to stop herself from scarfing down all of my mom's home-made pineapple tarts that we brought over from Singapore (she did love her food). Nothing unusual or earth-shattering happened, it was just a nice time with nice people. And we kept coming back, taking that flight from Singapore every year, because finding genuinely good people to spend time with is a rare and wonderful thing, a thing that we treasured dearly.

I wish the story could have continued like this indefinitely, but as time continued to pass and Meow's kidney problems worsened, something had to be done. A few years ago she was finally able to get a kidney transplant. She had prepared for this pretty much all her life, and all the necessary steps were taken to ensure a successful transplant. After the operation, for about a year, everything seemed great.

And then something happened. Meow developed a rare complication that prevented her body from absorbing nutrients by eating, which would cause her new kidney to eventually fail. Medical opinions were sought, experts were consulted, but the diagnosis remained. There is no cure. It was nobody's fault. It was just something that happened.

Over the last year, she grew weaker and weaker. She had to throw up every few hours, and was permanently hooked up to a machine. It was a miserable existence, one that nobody should have to go through. And yet, when we visited her earlier this year, for what turned out to be the last time, we were able to chat for a few hours. It probably took a lot out of her, but she didn't let it show.

It seemed like old times.

Mildred Ann Koh passed away on Sunday morning, 10th November 2013. Time has stopped passing for her much, much too soon, but it was a meaningful and worthwhile existence. She touched the lives of many by simply being a good person, living her life with kindness, helpfulness and integrity. In Drew, she had a husband who loves her completely and utterly, but for the rest of us that had the fortune to know her, we all love her in our own way.

I will not remember her as the blind one, or the sick one, or the one who had the audacity to marry someone 11 years her junior. Those are facts, but they are not the facts that define her; if she was none of these things, Bern and I would still be flying over every year to spend a good time with good friends. Instead, Meow is the nice one, the helpful one, the kind one, the sensible one, the one with the sense of humour, and the determination, and the unwavering principles.

I will miss her gentle chiding of Drew when he does something absent-minded. I will miss playing a silly board game with her and laughing as she tries to figure out what that blob of clay is supposed to represent. I will miss her intelligence, her insights, her laugh, her smile. I imagine that she is looking down at us right now with perfect eyesight, sipping a cool drink and munching on sushi with chocolate cake for dessert, chuckling at how awkward the morning service was and how uncomfortable I look wearing a suit. The world is a slightly less pleasant place without her around. I will miss her. We will all miss her.

Farewell, Meow. Rest in peace.

[Transcript of eulogy delivered on 19th November 2013]

What is love?

(...baby don't hurt me, don't hurt me no more...)

I've only ever been in one relationship; my wife and I got together when I was 16 and she was 14, and we've been together ever since. We've had our share of ups and downs, but we've never really even had a serious quarrel. Honestly, we're disgustingly happy.

Maybe that's why I've had quite a few people seek me out for relationship advice. Well, I haven't done any research or anything, but I've got a very simple Theory of Love(tm) that is composed of two parts, which I will be sharing in this post. For ease of discourse, my pronouns assume that I'm talking to a guy who's possibly in love with a girl.

Here's Part One of my Theory of Love: "When you love someone, making her happy makes you happy."

Read that sentence again. It is VERY different from "You're happy when you're with her." The key is that when you're in love, your happiness is tied to her happiness, not her looks or her actions or whatever. There is nothing wrong with enjoying someone's company, but if you love her, you'd enjoy doing things to please her, because seeing her happy makes you happy. Naturally, seeing her sad makes you sad. If you enjoy going out with her to a party, that's fine. But if she wants to leave because she's got a bad headache and you'd rather stay than send her safely home, maybe it's time to re-evaluate the relationship.

Here's Part Two of my Theory of Love, which is just as important as Part One: "The relationship only works if she feels the same way."

Duh, right? Well, it's amazing how many people forget this part. I see many budding relationships where both parties are happy: he's happy because she's happy, but she's happy because he's doing stuff to make her happy. Unfortunately, she isn't really interested in making him happy, or at least she wouldn't go out of her way to do so. I'm not saying that the girl in this scenario is the villain of the piece. Most likely she is just enjoying herself and not analyzing things too closely.

If both parties feel the same way, then the relationship has every chance of working. Take the example of a guy I know who had a smoking habit of 100 sticks a day. His wife doesn't smoke and hates it when he does, so she wants him to quit. Since he loves his wife, he's willing to try his best to at least cut down; last I checked, he's down to 10 sticks a day. Since his wife loves him, and she knows how difficult it is for him to quit, she encourages him when she can and isn't too hard on him if he needs to puff a stick or two after a stressful day.

See how this works? It's just making mutual compromises because both parties want each other to be happy. And that, to me, is love.