IN LOVING MEMORY OF MY MOTHER

Han Mei Lan

The Lord has called our beloved mother Tan Guek Choo, better known as Mrs Han, home to be with Him and enjoy eternal rest in heaven. What wonderful and comforting knowledge this is to our family, to know that our mother is alive and well in the presence of her Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ and forever will be! Truly, “Precious in the sight of the LORD is the death of his saints.” (Ps 116:15). Now, with confidence in God’s promise in 1 Thessalonians 4:13–18, we can look forward to being reunited with our dear mother again when the Lord returns.

Our mother was born on Dec 9^th, 1941 in Singapore. Her father was a naval officer and was taken away by the Japanese during the Occupation. She was the younger of two siblings, her mother and older brother were unbelievers, though by God’s grace my maternal grandmother was saved in her old age. My mother was saved when she was a teenager, in the years after the war. It was difficult for young people when they became Christians in those days, having to bear much family persecution for their faith; it was even more difficult for girls or young women compared to men when they converted, society being much more traditional and restrictive then. Hence it was such that our father Han Soon Juan, better known as Elder Han, who was led to Christ by the late Elder William Seah when they were studying in RI, was attracted as much to my mother as by her love for Christ.

My parents loved each other a lot. At a family worship held at our home in the late 1980s, my father testified to church members that he was amazed and grateful that my mother loved him and was willing to marry him despite his polio disability and despite him potentially not being able to father children. He wondered aloud how many young women would be willing to marry such a man! By his testimony, he had expressed his deep love for my mother. Surely apart from salvation, she was God’s gift of a lifetime for him. Throughout their life together, until she became weak due to this progressive neurological decline, whenever they went to the supermarket, my mother would be the one carrying the heavy grocery bags instead of my father, she did not once mind that, she just took it upon herself to carry heavy items for my father because of his polio leg. She would also peel prawns and oranges for him at the dinner table. She would cook his favourite dishes and season the food according to his taste. Of course it helped that my father enjoyed her cooking very much (except in later years when she tried to control his salt and fat intake, he sometimes complained about her food).

Academically, my mother was not a ‘good’ student. In those days in Secondary school, there were the Arts and Science streams, while academically weaker students would land themselves in the Commerce stream, which was where my mother found herself. After she passed her GCE ‘O’ levels, she tried a short teaching stint in a primary school. Having decided teaching was not for her, she enrolled in Nursing school, and excelled in it. It was God’s plan for my mother to become a nurse and so despite her modest academic qualifications, she rose through the ranks almost effortlessly, and eventually became the Chief Nursing Officer. She worked tremendously hard, doing overtime virtually all the time, and dedicated herself to her patients and later to the nursing administration when she was promoted to higher office. She is a shining example to us children of sheer hard work, industry and resolve. God put her in nursing to be a Florence Nightingale to her patients and of course to our family as well. I remember my mother faithfully going daily to my maternal grandmother’s home either before or after work to give her insulin injections, she also nursed our fevers and flus and dressed our wounds, and I cannot forget how she chased us crying children round the house when she tried to give us injections (for reasons known only to her) and we were trying our hardest to escape.

My brothers and I thank God for a Christian mother, even Christian parents who have given us a spiritual heritage. When we children were small, my mother would gather us to my parents’ bedroom every night for a bedtime talk. We would roll around on her bed and we would share and talk about things, and she would advise and counsel us, and she would always end by making us sit up and she would close in prayer. Throughout my school life, my mother would always encourage me by telling me to “Do your best, and God will do the rest.” As studies grew harder, this exhortation was strength and comfort to me and I remember it well to this day and teach it to my children. I realise now she was teaching us the doctrine of Divine Sovereignty and Human Responsibility way back then in the 1970s! In church in the 1980s, I remember my mother serving with the other ladies in the Sunday Lunch ministry. The ladies would cook lunch in the FEBC kitchen and serve lunch to church members after worship service. She was very happy to be able to serve in this way. I was also very happy because whenever my mother was serving in the kitchen, I would join her after service and help to serve too. My mother had a lovely singing voice and though she was not in the choir, she used it well to sing loudly during worship service to sing praises to the Lord. I could always hear her well pitched soprano voice during congregational singing. My mother learned from Rev. Tow to love Israel and she resolved to join Rev. Tow’s Holy Land Pilgrimage in the early 1990s even though my father was not able to go. She was very blessed by the experience and my father caught her zeal and they went together on another pilgrimage a few years later.

I remember my mother as someone who was quite gung ho in trying out new things. She was not afraid of anything except lizards. My father being the zero risk sort, when our parents took us children for a day at the beach, my mother would be the one taking us down to wade in the sea while my father would be standing far up on the sand shouting warnings of treacherous waves carrying us away. She would gamely don her swimsuit to go ‘swimming’ with us children in the swimming pool though she couldn’t swim. When the neighbourhood community centre first offered baking classes way back in the 1980s, she would enrol and come home every lesson with samples of cakes and biscuits that she had saved for us. Her pineapple tarts eventually became world famous within our family and my taste buds till today can discern no better pineapple tarts than my mother’s.

I will miss my beloved mother very much, she is God’s wonderful gift to me and my brothers; equipped with a mother’s love and sound nursing skills, she did her best to love, nurture and bring us up in the Lord. She is also God’s precious lifetime gift to our father; together they set us an example of steadfast love and commitment in marriage, to the end they were inseparable. God has also blessed her with a son in law, two daughters in law and nine grandchildren. My mother asked me soon after we were married when we were having children and said she would like to help look after them. She took great delight in looking after our three children, and also my six nieces and nephews, using her nursing experience to benefit them (no injections though). I will always be grateful for her help in need when I was a young inexperienced mother.

My father, my brothers and I are most happy and our family rejoices in the knowledge that she is a child of God and He has called her home to be with Him forever, which means we can look forward to seeing and being with our mother again one day soon. The Lord bless all of you for your love, care and persevering prayers for our mother and for keeping her company through the last eight years of her illness. Our sincerest and heartfelt thanks to you all.

2 September 2017