UPDATE: On 11 Jan 2019, taxi driver Yap Kok Hua, 55, was charged in court for causing Kathy’s death by driving in a negligent manner.
On 19 April 2018, a horrific car crash involving a taxi and a car at the junction of Clementi Road and Commonwealth Avenue West claimed the life of one young student.
She was 19-year-old Kathy Ong, the only daughter of her parents, Jacqueline Ong and Keith Ong.
Kathy was an NUS environmental studies undergraduate. She was in her first year of university, and a resident of Tembusu College. That night, she and her friends were heading back to college in the taxi, when the tragedy happened.
Apparently, the taxi driver had failed to give way to a car while making a right turn into Clementi Road and the two cars ended up colliding with each other.
On 23 April 2018, her father posted a heart-wrenching tribute to his only child…
Their only child died in car crash in Singapore…
Kathy was known to be very close to her family.
“Everything she did, she had her parents in mind. She would talk about them all the time. We could all tell they meant a lot to her”, her friend told The Straits Times.
Her father, Mr Keith Ong revealed how Kathy had uncannily written about her own funeral once…
He wrote On Facebook , “Baby, when you wrote about your own death, Daddy felt it was so weird and inauspicious for a 19-year-old to write such stuff…”
But now, he’s thankful that she wrote it.
“It’s the closest I can get to hearing you cos I never had the chance to have a last word with you.”
The heartbroken father also writes about the last time he saw his daughter…
“I am glad I sent you fruits on Tue evening and we hugged each other tightly as that was the last time I got to hug you dearly in my arms.”
These words got us moist-eyed, “I know there is a lot more you have to tell daddy and mummy. I don’t know how but I hope I get to see, hear and feel you soon…”
The post found much love online, and has already been shared many thousand times. Shocking videos, which showed Kathy almost getting flung out of the taxi, keep playing in our minds…
Had she known of her own death?
Her writing reads like a premonition…
“Today is my funeral…”
PHOTO: FACEBOOK / KEITH ONG
This is what Kathy had written:
“Today is my funeral.
A water hyacinth woven coffin (they’re sustainable and biodegradable — I hurt the environment enough while alive) lies in the centre, at the front of a white, glassy wall. There are carefully arranged flowers colouring the place, a warmer, softer hue from good-willed acquaintances of the bereaved, my loved ones.
People talk in hushed, respectful, comforting voices, conscious of my absence, but they will come to terms with this funeral and relax in abit, and normal conversation will resume in the presence of others they might not have seen in awhile. A funeral serves as a rather efficient gathering.
My parents stand close by; they are my biggest sorrow, but I will not get to that.
Time is merciless, they think, not at all fair, let alone too fair the way their daughter had lamented, because how could enough be given to them yet so little to their only child, such that they lived to watch her die?
PHOTO: FACEBOOK / (REMEMBERING) KATHY ONG
If one, however were to believe in destiny, that one’s entitled time was predetermined from the beginning, then maybe there is fairness in that every moment of time felt longer to me than it did for them, or some other reasons related to perception of time.
Everything in this hall has a time limit — the blooming of the flowers, my physical body, people’s presence, and their memory of me. But, me, I am no longer bound by time.
Now isolated from the rest of my community, does time still have a purpose for me? From this point on, whether or not I do not know, but I know not time the way I used to before.
I had to take a break before writing this part; though short, writing my own funeral was quite an out-of-body experience, emotionally rather draining. There were a lot of pauses before I wrote, a lot of images in my head, such that those short paragraphs — now that I look at the clock — took me 2 hours to write. And I’ve missed my friend’s request for lunch.”
— Kathy Ong
We at theAsianparent offer our heartfelt condolences to Kathy’s family. We hope and pray that they find strength to deal with this loss. Kathy is now at peace.
“No longer bound by time.”
Also READ: “I lost my wife to cancer…My life will never be complete again”
