Madam Chan Lai Fong passed away aged 98. On Feb 13, she died in her sleep.
“She had an early dinner before going to bed. The maid called us when there was no response from her,” said her daughter-in-law, Jasmine Tan.
Madam Tan is the mother of Chow Yun Fat. Most readers (like me) do not know of that name. But the son she had raised is famous. Everyone this side of the globe knows him. Yet his fame has deep roots, and it can be traced to a mother who had deep love.
Jasmine said that her MIL has always been a low-key person. She recalled that Madam Tan had said that “she would prefer her children to be filial when she was alive and a grand funeral would be useless to her.”
Chow Yun Fat kept to that promise, and gave her a simple funeral. And due to the coronvirus, “only close relatives came to the funeral held last Saturday and did not invite friends from the entertainment industry.”
Reporter Ruey Yan wrote: “Madam Tan married Chow’s father when she was 17 and won an Outstanding Mother award at the World Outstanding Chinese Awards in 2008.
On receiving the award, she said she had told her children not to do harm to society when they went out to work.”
“She had raised her four children almost single-handedly as Chow’s father worked on a tanker and was out at sea most of the time.”
Lesson? One.
Incidentally, yesterday was International Women’s Day. And ST honoured four winners, from a pool of 40 nominated women.
One of them was mother, Emalin Rom, 71. She has been the sole caregiver to her three adult children who have special needs. Her youngest child, 34, and 36-year-old twins have autism. Her husband passed away 8 years ago.
Emalin won the Loving Caregiver award. She said: “It is quite challenging to take care of them, but as a mother, I cannot give up. It takes a lot of love and patience, but they are not a burden - they bring a lot of joy to me and make me smile every day.”
Motherhood (or fatherhood) is the safe harbour we all return to when the storm of life hits real hard. For who can forget the years of tireless labour, thankless most times, yet, the decades of sacrifices go undimmed, unceasing?
That is the cornerstone of every relationship. And should you take away that pivotal maternal cinderblock, the whole structure of a person from birth to adulthood (and beyond) is liable to be unstable.
Mind you, you can’t find hypocrisy in a mother’s (or father’s) nurturance. There is often no glamour in it. In anonymity, your generosity is seldom illuminated. That’s the real acid-test of parenthood, it is its own reward.
You also don’t win any award along the hardscrabble, but life-sharpening, journey. It is a job beyond the 9-to-5. It is 24, 7, 365. The breaks come when they are asleep. But by then, you are oblivious to the world too (in your jadedness).
I feel that God made it that way because the first person you see has to be the person who nurtures you even before you come into existence. That enduring bond of connection defines all other bonds of varying closeness as you take upon your own journey when it’s time for you to nurture your very own.
Her labour of love for you, though at times imperfect, is the same labour expected of you when you first lay your eyes on your newborn. It is a familiar and nostalgic vulnerability you see in yourself when she first took care of you unconditionally, unwavering.
There is thus no prize for motherhood except the joy of a bond that grows even stronger through every trial of life.
In truth, she can’t live forever, you know that. She can only give you forever in the time she has with you. And it is a forever that you pass down to your own child, as your own child passes down to hers or his.
That forever is the bond that stories of love and devotion are diligently woven together by a community that has received and given love the way a mother has given hers.
I guess that is why Madam Tan said, “That a grand funeral would be useless to her.”
For it is not the grandiosity of a wake that is a testament to motherhood. It is first and foremost a life of selfless giving - even during times where a step forward is the heaviest - that defines a life, most deeply and completely, and forever.
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