Chee Keong: A life comes and goes.

A life comes and goes. How much can you take with you when it is your time to go? 

All the flashes from cameras will dim one day. They will not run out of battery just because you are gone. They wait for the next star to walk them by, younger, prettier and/or smarter, and then it will be their time to go.

This is life. Whether you admit it or not, whether you live in a penthouse or a halfway house, your time here will expire. Everything will follow suit. 

In the larger scheme of things, you are going to be forgotten by the world. Never forget that immortality, like democracy, are exclusively reserved for the gods of this world and you have no share in it. 

Like a supernova millions of light-years away, they are transient cosmological events. At their peak brightness, they rival the collective shine of a galaxy. 

But they too are spent after some time, and most of them collapse into a black hole, where not even light can escape. It is as if all that glamor and attention are forever buried with them after they are burnt out.

Let me take a page off a life in the ST papers today. He is largely unknown. His name is Kang Chee Keong. He is 56. He spent most of his life in and out of prison. He now works in a halfway house The Helping Hand. 

Reported by Ong Wee Jin and Aw Cheng Wei, Chee Keong turned from a heroin addict to a filial son. His mother (in her 80s) never gave up on him. Even in her most fragile self, she never stopped visiting him. 

Chee Keong remembered in 2014 when she visited him. “She was so old that the guards had to allow her lift access.” 

He said: “I used to think that going to prison was a good thing for my mother, who only needed to visit me once every two weeks. I thought she would be more upset if I was out bumming around.”

Chee Keong also said that he “used to think that taking drugs was a personal choice, without considering how it affected the people around (him)”. But he said that “the price to pay is very high.”

I can imagine how his mother must have hoped against hope that her son would change. That he would sooner rather than later come to his senses, and turn over a new leaf. 

I can also imagine all the quiet disappointments in her life and tears shed as Chee Keong goes in and out of prison, so frequently that anyone in her shoe would have just walk away (and might not even feel the guilt of it anymore). But she pressed on for her Son.

Chee Keong’s father died when he was only 15 and that was where he fell into heroin addiction. He said: “My mother worked a lot, and I was a latchkey kid. I fell into the wrong crowd, and gave in to peer pressure.”

Recently, in May, his mother suffered a fall and is now recovering at Ren Ci Community Hospital. Married, Chee Keong and his wife now visit her every day. 

He said: “I can feel that my mother’s Happy when I visit her, though she may not always remember my visits.”

Chee Keong not only has the enduring love of his mother, he also has community. He said he read the Bible in prison and is working in The Helping Hand after his release. “I learnt how to face my problems through The Helping Hand and through religion.”

He now leads a simple life. “He wakes up at 5am on weekdays and gets to The Helping Hand in Upper Serangoon at 6am. He has breakfast there and a shower before attending church service at 8am. He then starts work at 9am until about 4pm. After work, he returns to The Helping Hand for a shower before visiting his mother with his wife.”

"It's a normal person's life," he said. "What I had before (as an addict) wasn't.” Yes, it wasn’t normal. 

Lesson? ...

Earlier, I talked about how a life comes and goes, I talked about supernova and how its time too will come when it collapses into nothingness, with all that fanfare and brightness buried and sealed somewhere millions, if not billions, of light-years away. 

It is a fact that nothing lasts forever. And the applause of men fades as fast as the standing ovation you receive for that moment when the shrilling loudness dies down into a deafening stillness. 

Alas, even for the many hands that clap for you, for your worthly successes, not all of them will be there when you need a helping hand to lift you. In fact, many of the same hands will rush to clap for the next big personality that walks their way.

In life, you only need a handful to make a difference. You only need those who love you unconditionally to sustain and transform you. 

If there were any riches that money cannot buy, time cannot rob, and the adulation of men cannot match, it is the love of a mother (or parent) and community.

Chee Keong said: “My relationship with my mother has always been good. No matter what I did, she was always there for me."

There is no measure of wealth that is more reliable than that. An abiding presence and encouragement that are always there regardless of what happens is all the wealth a person needs in his lifetime. 

One may not receive extraordinary attention the world is too eager to give, but tell me, what act comes close to the extraordinary love a mother gives without expecting anything in return?

And I know nothing lasts forever, not empires, civilisations and even supernovae. But I would like to think, be it wishful or otherwise, that a love that waits patiently for you to change, even if it takes almost a lifetime, is the closest you will ever experience that which is essentially timelessness in your lifetime.