Mother kills son and herself - Mental Illness is Real.

As W.H. Auden once said: “We must love one another or die.”

But how do you come to terms with a mother who strangled her five-yr-old son and then fatally stabbed herself? How do you reconcile a mother’s love that tragically compelled her to take her son’s life and her own?

Japanese national, Nami, 41, was suffering from major depressive disorder, but was undergoing treatment, according to the Coroner’s findings. 

Nami sought help at least three days before the tragedy on Nov 14 last year. She was treated for Low mood and anxiety. She told a psychiatrist about her suicide thoughts and feelings of depression. She informed her doctor that she was not sleeping well and was anxious for the past few months. She lost her “appetite, weight and hair”, and “had palpitations for about a week.”

Nami left nothing unsaid about her condition. She even told the psychiatrist “she was stressed about her son... (who was autistic and had attention deficit hyperactivity disorder), without revealing the exact reasons.”

And she was not without help. Nami was “immediately referred to the emergency medicine department at Singapore General Hospital, where she was denied being suicidal but said she had been feeling depressed for a year.” 

She even assured her private psychiatrist that she won’t harm herself for the sake of her children. She has a younger child and her husband was a businessman. Yet, refusing such a thought, she did admit that she had “one transient, short episode of thinking of ending her life a week prior.”

This were the trail she had left behind, and on that fateful day, on 13 Nov, she also left a suicide note. In the note, she said her medication did not work and told her husband “she was going to take Sotaro with her.”

At the time, her husband was on a business trip to China, and they last spoke on 10 Nov, according to the Coroner’s account. 

Here is what happened as reported by Cara Wong.

“According to the maid, in the night of Nov 13, (Nami) read storybooks to her children until they fell asleep. She later texted the maid to tell her that she had taken Sotaro to the hospital as he was “having a fever””.

“However, the police investigation showed that (Nami) had likely strangled Sotaro in the living room using a long elastic band and raffia string.”

“Around 5:40 am, she drove out, with her son’s body covered in a white blanket, to Lorong Sesuai.” And she then fatally stabbed herself “near Bukit Timah Reserve.”

Alas, how do you stop someone whose mind has already made up? The grim narrative haunts me because she left the child who is presumably normal and took the one who is not. But she did not leave him alone. As his mother, she journeyed with him till the end, even if an end premature. 

Here, I can only deal with the facts, as I would not even attempt to address the cause. For who truly understands the mind and all its complexities? 

Like the mysterious world that lies deep beneath the vast ocean, doctors of the mind are at times merely lifeguards by the beach looking at the endless expanse of a person’s mind not knowing what is pulling that person down, and equally clueless about how far down the unknown depth that grips goes. 

A novelist/poet Stevie Smith said: “I was much far out all my life, And not waving but drowning.” 

That must been how many people like Nami felt in their mental ocean struggling to stay afloat. I guess at times they wish so much to stop the struggle and sink effortlessly into the deep that calls out to them, thereby allowing the darkness to drown out the pretentious light for the call to save oneself. 

Mind you, Nami was not without medical help. She had in fact sought it, and shared her anxiety and transient suicidal thoughts with professionals. 

I trust she had a community, even if but a handful. She had her husband, maid, children and even wrote to her brother, “pleading with him to raise her younger son together with his children.”

In every naturally conceivable way, Nami shouldn’t have any reason to cease the struggle and sink in. Yet, her waves from a shadowy distance had sent a mixed signal, one of rescue and the other of letting go. At some point, she had drifted much too far out in her life to ever saw the need to swim back to shore or within visible sight. 

Alas, at such rare times, the inevitability of life is its inevitability. And I know, by writing this, I have taken a road very much remote for travelling, entering the dark woods where one is perpetually struggling to existential exhaustion. But I am not one given in to the pretentious light when the struggle seems endless, and the pain unceasing. 

When a life or two is gone this way, when the waving stops, and the ocean is still once more, we who stand from afar are always reminded to hold on tight to our loved ones, and to look into their eyes to remind them that we must indeed love one another, or die, and die only when our time is up.

 

My son did us proud - GCE O Levels Results.

Many did well in their O levels yesterday. Some scored distinctions; some didn’t. Some shed tears; not all left their schools with jubilation though. 

My son took his O levels result too. He had As and Bs and he qualified for some of the JCs. 

No doubt he wished he had done better, we nevertheless celebrated last night because as a family, we are proud of him. It is a milestone for us as parents and I believe life will be bridged by many of these milestones if we don’t give up the good fight. 

Fatherhood is a journey. I never expected it to be smooth sailing. I recall I once wrote my son a letter of apology after he got his CA results at Primary 6, five years ago. 

At that time, I expressed my stern disapproval in ways that had left him in tears. And this was how I started my letter of apology: - 

”Son, your dad is a jerk. He expects you to grow up faster than you can enjoy growing up. He expects you to wear his big Italian shoes and walk like a grown up when you are just a boy. He is dreaming of an adult "you" in a child’s body. He doesn’t know what he is talking about. He is living in cloud cuckoo land.

I think he needs to be in your shoes and walk your walk and talk your talk. He needs to understand that life is not just about grades. There is more to it.

Of course, who doesn’t want their children to do well, academically that is. In this society, many will judge you by your grades. We all know that. There is unfortunately a disquieting form of unspoken discrimination. But the truth is, life does not punish you for mistakes. In fact, life rewards you for it, and it is called learning.

Your dad should have taken some time to reflect about that. Your dad should know that at your age, you are trying your best. And you are most sincere about it. If he thinks that that is not good enough, well then the problem lies with him and not you.

If he compares you with others, then he may as well compare himself with Einstein or Stephen Hawking (maybe that's thinking too highly of him?). How’s that for a comparison because as unrealistic as that is, the boot is now on the other foot? And spare not the kicking on your account right?

Anyway, if the roles were reversed, I am sure your dad would earnestly yearn for his own dad to understand him as you now earnestly yearn for him to understand you. 

And if your dad thinks long and hard about it, he will realize that his bond with you does not start and end with the grades you receive at such a tender age. And it would be so unfair to be judged or measured by what you do now when what you do later in life is equally important, if not more so. At the very least, it would definitely be more enduring.

In any event, here’s some food for thought for that old geezer. Why should he measure you by the things you have done in past at the expense of your potentials in the future? Doesn’t he know that your life stretches out from cradle to grave and not from cradle to primary school exams or PSLE or GCE levels?”

Alas, I reread that this morning and ticked off one of the many boxes of fatherhood I label as - “Mike, you can be so wrong sometimes”. 

The issue with us parents is not that we do not have faith in our child, in their potential. The issue is, we want them to bloom at our time, not theirs. 

Mind you, a meritocratic society like ours is about extracting every merit in our kid early in life so as to give them a good kick-start in life. That’s the manu-script the pied piper of society plays to. 

Yes, there are those academically inclined and they bloom way before one can say “ready, get set...” and she’s off. 

But as faithful as random genetic selection is, there is the child born specifically to us, and they come to us as they are, whether we like it or not. Some evidently need more time to bloom, and I learn this the hard way as a father. That letter of apology proves this well. 

That letter brings out the trials of fatherhood when we see it as a strict performance, expecting them to jump one hoop after another. But it turns into confident joy when we reprioritise and focus (with a long lens view) on the relationship first.

I believe the “grades” we as parents need most to score with our child is not so much the academic ones, but our relationship with them. 

I know this is a given, and it goes without saying. But we often unknowingly leverage the relationship as a means to get better grades rather than building it up regardless of the grades. 

In our face-saving society, we want to make trophy display out of our child’s grades because it reflects well on us, our parenting skills. We can then boast about what we did right, sometimes mistaking correlation for causation. 

It’s like merchandise positioning, where we display the products we want others to take notice of at the most prominent spot, and for those product of less value to us, or may embarrass us, we place them at the back of the store. 

Going back to my apology letter, I felt that it confirms one thing: our child yearns for our approval - just as we ourselves yearned for our parent’s. 

And when we - whether consciously or unconsciously - make it conditional, or turn it into one that is merit-based, we repeat the sins of our parents and pass down an inheritance of conditional, performance-based love, instead of an unconditional, overcoming one. 

Let me end with the end of my apology letter . It still guides me today, and checks me at times.

“I love you son. You are my son for a reason. And the primary reason is not because of what you can do or achieve or give or contribute or will become. It is because you are you. You are special just being you. And that's a privilege of a lifetime. For me, I will always remind myself of how blessed I am to be a part of this journey of growth and discovery with you for as long as I shall live.” 

Ps: you have done well son, and should there be an apology here, it would be that I should have told you this much earlier in your life.

Fatherhood: To fail successfully.

My father seldom spoke. He is a Hainanese. I guess that speaks enough. By default, I am a Hainanese too. But I speak. I speak quite a lot. I write too. As a father, I have spoken much more to my son in his 14 years than my father has ever spoken to me thus far (that is, 46 years and counting).

So, being the loquacious me, my son finds me talking rubbish sometimes. But my writing (as I am doing now) usually speaks volume. And here is how I celebrate Father's Day this morning. I celebrate it by looking back at my failures as a father. I celebrate it by looking at the gap in my commitment to my three kids. I celebrate this day by patting myself on the back and whisper, "You've a lifetime to get this right...don't lose heart."

Fatherhood is a strange virus of love. It grows within you. It infects your bloodstream. It makes your heart beat faster on some occasions, crazy fast if you get what I mean. This virus is resistant too. It fights to stay within and multiply. It seeks to survive and thrive. This virus consumes me sometimes; it sends me into fits of fever, rage and worry.

Now associating love with a virus seems strange. But when it comes to fatherhood, I think it is an apt metaphor about our imperfections. You see, a virus is a bad thing only if you succumb to it. It is a good thing if it strengthens you (your immune system that is). And in fatherhood terms, the love virus fortifies you as you learn from one stupid mistakes after another. And I have my fair harvest of errors as a father over the years.

Somehow, I thought I'd planted the right seeds to enable fatherhood to flourish, that is, I courted the first girl I kissed, married her after 9 years of courtship, and then determined in our hearts that we are going to turn our honeymoon night into future bundles of joy.

Then, when the first, second and third bundles arrived, I felt like I am juggling cats and dogs in the air. It's not the juggling that is hard though. It is keeping them from fighting each other that makes the whole juggling feat terrifyingly challenging.

And I have dropped them many times, ahem, I mean failed to live up. I lost my cool. I over-punished. I scolded to let off steam. I offered them the sunset of my energy. I imposed my wishes and stillborn dreams on them. I expected them to grow up faster than they can enjoy growing up. I demanded adult minds growing in young bodies. I didn't always do what I preach (or write). And at times, and this harvest of errors list can go on and on actually, I was judgmental, impatient and morose to them.

It is said that idealism increases the further you are away from the issue (or children). That's so true. Before the bundles of joy came, I had high targets for them. I aimed for the sky. After they came, I found that most times I am shooting blanks. The sky seems like falling. And the targets miles away.

At this juncture, you may be asking me: "What's your point, mike? It's father's day for heaven sake!"

Well, it's Father's Day I know, and fathers are once a child learning from their own father. They learn from examples and experiences - be it positive or negative ones. And when the child becomes a father, the learning doesn't stop (it in fact goes full throttle).

If you think fatherhood is about being a mentor, teacher or guide to your child, you are half right. The other half is about being a student, that is, learning the ropes as you totter along. And trust me, the learning is never ending because growing up is never ending as new learning environments present themselves to both the father and the child.

I guess what distinguishes a good dad from a bad one is one of presence. It is about being there, staying the course, and following it through. A good dad is an imperfect dad who just doesn't give up. He may stumble and fall, but he makes it a point to get up. He has his own mountain to climb, but he makes time, loves his best and, for his kids, he shows up.

In other words, however broken he may be, being bombarded by the storms of life, and struggling to overcome his own demons, he falls forward. He adapts and makes amends. He learns from his mistakes. He doesn't give up. He fights for what is important, and deep down, he knows viscerally what is enduringly important.

He makes a difference. He pushes himself regardless of his moods, emotions or sentiments. He takes two steps forward for every one step back. In all this, he fails successfully. And in the end, when he looks back, when the children have all grown up to become fathers (and mothers) to their very own, he would have realized that by failing successfully, he had it fact succeeded more times than he had failed. He would in other words have succeeded, most unfailingly. Cheerz.

What to write about?

This morning I woke up and thought to myself, “What am I going to write about?” Seriously, what should be foremost in my heart? For I do not wish to invent anything pretentious. I do not want to write for vanity or self promotion. I desire to write about matters that matter. I want to leave a mark, a lasting impression with my words. I want to write so that I could learn too.

So, I stared at my computer screen and I thought it stared back at me. It was waiting for me to pour out my heart. It was waiting for some revelation to fill the page. The computer screen was all ready to receive my first seed of thought. I too was eager to write about something meaningful, something enduring.

If you have been reading my blog and Facebook, you will note that I write about various subjects. Religion. Politics. Mega-churches. Politicians. Corruption. Issues of the heart. Pain and suffering. Disappointment. Hope. Faith. Life as a whole. And so on.

Everything seems to interest me. Everything fermenting or fomenting on the world stage intrigues me. Everything about hypocrisy, duplicity, deceit and human folly on a grand and personal scale winds me up.

I have been critical about everything, everybody and mostly yours truly. When it comes to my mistakes, my foibles, I seldom held back the self-flagellation. I believe that I am aware of my own weaknesses. I believe that I see more of the faults in me than others. So, no subject about my flaws, life in general, love and relationships are off limits.

But I am stalling here. I am wasting your time having read so far without providing you with any concrete direction. At the very least, I owe it to you my readers to come clean about what I want to write about this morning. I owe it to you to be forthright. And now, I still haven't thought of the subject before it's time for me to pack up to leave for Church in one hour's time. I am admittedly (and quite pathetically) struggling to rein in and come to terms with my thoughts. I am chasing the wind.

Then, right at this moment, some events in the past struck me. It is a recollection of the most ordinary moments in my life. I am writing them as I am recalling them here. They are nothing grand or portentous like some political revolutions brewing somewhere, some corruption exposed, or some religious revelation moving hearts and minds. No siree. These personal recollections are all too mundane at first sight to stir up anything of any significance.

They are in fact recollections about the time I was walking with my 10-year-old daughter to school. I do this ritual every morning. My mind is directed to our most pedestrian conversation together in the early hours of the morning. I recall her trying her darnest to share a joke with me and I am trying my darnest to find the punch-line. It is one humor needle in an all muddled haystack.

Then, the image of her face smiling at me in a nondescript coffee shop pop into my cerebral screen and the same got written into my computer that you are now reading. Too mundane for capturing any attention I guess.

I also thought about my son, 14 years old. I thought about us running together; he is fast. I thought about him when I sent him off and saw him struggling with his school bag as he disappeared into the crowded bus. Nothing earth shaking right?

Quite unconsciously, another recollection comes in unsolicited and my fingers are busy banging away on the keyboard. The image is about a room, my room. And it is all quiet, pin-drop. My view zooms in onto my 5-year-old daughter, sleeping. She is a picture of unshakeable peace. I guess mothers with young kids know exactly what I am talking (or writing) about.

Words cannot fully capture the moment when your baby sleeps. All that restless, and seemingly endless energy just converges into a singularity of phenomenal tranquility. For that frozen moment, you feel one with your child and all your anxiety gets suck back into a distant blurry blot.

Then, right at this moment, the image of my wife emerges. I recall the time I proposed to her. I was on Sentosa bridge, on one knee, and with a modest personalized silver ring, hardly visible when worn, I asked her to marry me. Her answer still echoes in the chambers of my heart. The elation could still be felt.

That is all I could think and write about this morning and I apologize if I have bored you my readers with the most ordinary moments of my past. I wanted to write something profound, purposeful and provocative even. But I am at a loss for subjects that measures up.

All I could muster is some personal recollection about the simple joys of life. I guess when you think about it, when all the dust finally settles, it is home that your heart is eager to return to. In all your busyness, in all the work issues that consume you, it is home that you can never let go. Ultimately, it is home that your heart has never really left.

And if there is anything worth writing about, I guess for me it would be the one subject that starts and ends with where my heart has always been - home. I therefore wish that you my readers will always hold on to that same unshakeable anchor that keeps you afloat amidst the torrents that seek to draw and entice you away. And that anchor is and has always been... your family. Cheerz.