Death In The Time Of Lunar New Year

As morbid as the topic is — worse that I’m expounding on it this first week of the Lunar New Year when feastings and celebrations are going on everywhere — Death (and the reminder of its eventuality) seems to be something I couldn’t avoid this season.

One Death After Another

Death #1

Firstly, some two weeks ago, my wheelchair-bound, 94-year-old neighbour Mr Ang passed away.

We don’t know him well since we only moved in next door to him less than a year ago. And we rarely saw him. He was a widower who lived alone with a helper, and was either at home or at a senior activity centre daily.

Yet, of the times we saw him when his helper brought him in and out of the apartment, Mr Ang was always cheerful and smiling.

Our misfortune indeed, to lose such a pleasant neighbour.

Death #2

Secondly, my friend’s dad passed away about the same time as Mr Ang. This happened within three months of an unfortunate pancreatic cancer diagnosis. For the first time, my friend and his family will miss celebrating the new year with his dad.

From what little I know, they were a close-knit family. So, for them, this death was both sudden and untimely to say the least.

When I was at the wake of my friend’s dad, he told me the undertaker hired for the wake and funeral arrangements shared that this was, apparently, a “popular” period for deaths! According to the undertaker, he typically sees his services in higher demand just before or after the start of the lunar new year.

Talk about morbid indeed!

And More…

But eerily enough, there does appear to be some truth to the undertaker’s assertion. Because when I went to pay respects and see how my friend was doing, I saw that there was another wake taking place in the next block of apartments beside his.

And not far from my block, where my neighbour Mr Ang’s wake took place that same week, there was also another wake going on.

Death, it seems, never takes a holiday. Even when we celebrate a new lunar year.

Our Near Brush With Death

Still on the subject of death, World Cancer Day took place earlier this month on the fourth.

According to its website, this is a day that’s set aside to “raise awareness about cancer, encourage its prevention, and mobilise action to address the global cancer epidemic.”

As I posted here previously, my family had our near brush with death when we came intimately close to experiencing cancer and its effects after my wife was officially diagnosed in September 2025 with Stage 4 Ovarian Cancer.

Though we are infinitely grateful she received swift and attentive medical care that has seen her going into remission since her chemo treatments successfully ended last month, the prospect of death now feels like a permanent shadow. It is a shadow that accompanies each moment of our lives. One that still has the potential to solidify into a genuine threat that could upend the remaining days of her life and ours.

Sooner than we would want.

Some days, it’s hard to shake off this feeling of dread and to carry on as though nothing’s changed.

As we visit family and relatives during this celebratory lunar new year week, the sight of my wife wearing her now usual cancer headgear — either a knitted woolly hat or a short-crop wig — reminds me that death is a reality that won’t be ignored.

Shhh….Death Is Taboo. Especially During Lunar New Year Celebrations

Yet ignored it still is. Especially among the Chinese. And especially around this festive season.

Typically, when the lunar new year commences, ethnic Chinese everywhere would celebrate with lavish feasts and visits to families and relatives. However, if someone in the family passes away during this period, the affected family members would usually avoid all these visits and celebrations, while observing a period of mourning. Friends and relatives would also generally avoid meeting them.

Why the social distancing?

The Chinese believe death is akin to bad fortune. As such, it would be ill-advised to “pass it around.” And certainly, if the death took place very close to the start of the new year, then all the more it would be taboo to be seen out and about celebrating.

Not that the Chinese are the only ones in the world who get skittish when it comes to the topic of death. Movements like Death Over Dinner that started 13 years ago in the US, and have since spread to more than 20 countries, remind us that many cultures tend to sidestep the issue.

Yet, death is an issue that’s ultimately unavoidable.

So addressing it head-on here, like a local campaign — Dying To Talk — to replicate Death Over Dinner, might prove the better way to go in the long run.

We shouldn’t avoid or delay facing it. And certainly we shouldn’t wait until it’s too late, and our loved ones are gone and buried.

Death, When Are You Taking My Mom?

On Tuesday, the first day of the Lunar New Year, I brought my wife and kids to visit my 91-year-old mother at a care home for the elderly.

My mom has been staying there for about a year or so now, since her Alzheimer’s and mobility continued to deteriorate, making it hard for us to render proper care to her at home without round-the-clock assisted living services.

(My mother’s my lone surviving parent since 2014, when my father passed away at the ripe old age of 98)

On Tuesday, as I looked at her, I realise for the first time that this might be my mom’s last Lunar New Year (LNY). Given how Alzheimer’s has robbed her of much of her memory and mental cognition already, she herself might not even be aware at all that it’s LNY now. Coupled with a body that’s now so gaunt, frail and bedridden (she can’t walk anymore, even with assistance), it’s really only a matter of a few years, maybe even months before death claims her.

This realisation was both stark and startling for me, more so now that I’ve typed the above paragraph and am re-reading it.

With each year that passes, death’s shadow looms ever bigger over my mom. And by extension, over all of us connected to her by blood.

What does this realisation mean for me as her son, even as this festive season rolls on? What about the next LNY?

When will death take my mom?

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