Yesterday, my soulmate, friend and father of my children died. He was 43 years old and just 2 weeks shy of his birthday. I have known him for 24 of those years, 7 dating, 12 married, 5 divorced.

I would be honest: those 5 last years were terribly bitter. And that is not how I want to remember him. I choose to remember him in the good years for the wonderful person he was when he loved me and I him. Here’s why:

• He was a terribly goofy dancer. At the NUS freshman orientation camp where we met, he captured my heart with his goofy dance moves to George Harrison’s “I’ve Got My Mind Set on You”. Fast forward to our wedding day and although he never figured out how to waltz despite the dance lessons, he obliged and tried his best, notwithstanding that the deejay played the wrong song!
• On our first date, he wore spectacles. For the next 17 years, he did not wear spectacles at all. Go figure …
• He hated peas and I had an aversion to corn. When we got mixed vegetables in our food, we would be passing each other his peas and my corn kernel.
• He had a really sensitive nose and was dependent on a steady supply of Kleenex Job Squad Kitchen towels. We often emptied the supermarket shelves of all their Job Squads. And whenever our regular supermarkets stocked out, it was a national emergency requiring us to scour all the supermarkets in Singapore for supplies.
• When I went overseas for an internship for 3 months in our 3rd year in NUS, he gave me a written note in a small cardboard tube (the tubes in the centre of facsimile paper rolls), with strict instructions to read it only once the plane took off. It told me how much he did not want me to go to Greece.
• We were unbeatable at Taboo. We could literally guess the answers within the first few words uttered by the other person most of the time.
• Once, he tried to piggy back me over slippery ice after I had slipped and fallen. He ended up slipping himself and falling, right on top of me.
• He was an unpaid employee of Shell. When I first started working, I did not yet have a driver’s license. He would drive me around to petrol stations to check on pump prices and to deal with operational emergencies in the middle of the night.
• Unlike most Singaporean guys, he did propose on bended knee by a lake no less, witnessed by a bunch of ducks. It was dreadfully cold in the early winter morning and I am sure that was a strategic move to get me to say yes.
• He once took my Blackberry when it was unlocked, looked up his contact information and made some edits without my knowledge. I found out only a few days later when I called him. In the Notes section, he had typed “I love moo moo very much”.
• He bought me Diablo III for my birthday when it launched and because he knew I was too busy with work, he had installed it and created the account for me so I could literally just hit the PC and start playing.
• Even after being married for 10 years, his face would light up when he found me in a crowded room full of busy people pushing supermarket trolleys out of checkout counters.

So to My Dearest Moo Moo, R.I.P. and thank you for the good times. They will live on in my memories, always cherished and loved. XoxO, your munchkin.