She lost her husband to cancer at 45 and now leads a widow support group for grieving women and their children

CNA

5 hours ago

They fell in love when they were barely 16. The year was 1988 – a time when phones had cords, not cameras.
'In my time, during your O-Level year, you'd write autographs for your friends and attach photographs taken with traditional film cameras,' 53-year-old Cynthia Tay recalled.
'We didn't have Wefies then. So my friends and I were looking for someone to take group photographs for us. Three guys we met at Raffles City Shopping Centre volunteered, and took photographs with our camera and their camera,' she reminisced.
The teenagers exchanged addresses so that they could mail the photos to one another. Then, Tay and one of the boys Jesse Peh began exchanging letters, since there was no WhatsApp or email then.
After writing to each other for a year, they met up, and a romance quickly blossomed.
Tay came from a divorced family with an absent father. Peh came from a family with two loving parents – something that attracted her.
'I grew up with many insecurities. Finding love and security had always been my mission,' she told CNA Women.
In 1997, after eight years of dating, the couple got married at the age of 25. Together, they built the family Tay never had.
They had three children, and Tay quit her job after their second child was born to be a homemaker. Peh, who was a Republic of Singapore Air Force pilot, supported the family.
'My husband had always been a good father. Growing up, I didn't have a father, so I wanted my husband to be very present,' said Tay.
This dream shattered when Peh died of stomach cancer in 2017 at the age of 45. For Tay, it felt like 'the whole world collapsed'.
Faced with the kind of grief that was hard to articulate, the young widow found solace in other bereaved widows.
In 2017, she joined Wicare Support Group, a charity for widows and their children,and began volunteering as a befriender and board member shortly after. In May this year, she was appointed the chairperson of the support group.
GRIEF BEGINS BEFORE DEATH
'Grief does not start after a person passes on. It starts when he is not able to hold a conversation with you, hold your hands, sleep in the same bed,' Tay reflected.
Peh was first diagnosed with early-stage stomach cancer in 2010 at the age of 38, but recovered after surgery and chemotherapy. For four years, he was cancer-free.
But in the fifth year, just before a long-anticipated family trip to Italy, the cancer returned. This time it was terminal.
In 2015, Peh was diagnosed with Stage 4 stomach cancer. The doctor said the father-of-three had up to a year to live.
'We cancelled our trip. All our plans were shattered,' Tay said.
For a while, Peh swung into depression. 'He knew my dream was to be with the kids and give them a really good childhood. He also knew I'd always wanted a complete family. Knowing he could not provide for us or be there for us anymore was really tough for him,' she added.
But Peh picked himself up and decided to spend his remaining time well. He even proposed to Tay again, and the couple held an intimate renewal of vows ceremony in 2015 on Christmas Day. 'I was very, very happy,' reminisced Tay.
Peh outlasted his doctor's forecast and survived for two years and three months. Over this period, he underwent radiotherapy, and several operations where he removed parts of his stomach, intestine and pancreas.
However, during the last nine months of his life, his digestive system shut down and he had to be fed intravenously. This did not satiate his hunger, and he was always hungry.
'My children and I dared not eat in front of him, and hid ourselves to eat. We made sure to rinse our mouth before going near him,' Tay said.
Her husband was hospitalised during this period and she stayed in the hospital with him the entire time; her children visited daily.
But towards the last two weeks of his life, Peh could not even be fed intravenously – his failing organs could no longer process the nutrients. By that time, Tay had already watched her husband wither from a robust 70-plus kg to 30-plus kg.
Helpless, the family brought him home where he died eight days later, on Mar 31, 2017. Their children were eight, 16 and 18.
A FAMILY SHATTERED
'Sometimes, people compare the experience of widowhood to people who are not married, or those who get divorced and become a single parent.
'But there is a bit of difference. Widowhood is a loving relationship that is forced to stop. Nobody wanted it, no one is at fault, but you just have no choice but to accept it,' said Tay.
'The longing for that person lingers,' she added. 'Now, every morning when I wake up, he's not there. Sometimes, I battle with acceptance. Is it really true that he's gone?'
Because Peh had been the sole breadwinner, Tay sold the family condominium and moved into a Housing Development Board flat to shore up the family finances. With the proceeds and Peh's savings, the family had enough to survive.
But a heavy silence fell over their home. 'As a caregiver, you're so busy day in, day out. But after he passed on, time stood still,' she said. Sometimes, Tay would cry herself to sleep.
In fact, on Tay's first birthday after her husband's death, she deliberately told her kids to return home late and give her alone time.
'I was so ready to cry big-time. But I couldn't squeeze a tear out of my eyes that day. Instead, I spent the time reflecting on our journey and good memories. And that's when I felt like, maybe this should be the way I start my life again,' she said.
Nine months after Peh's death, two friends of Tay's from church invited her for a Wicare workshop.
During the session, she heard other widows echo her greatest fear – dying and leaving her children orphaned. She also learnt to her surprise that the fatherless children in the group had different fears – they resented how people looked at them differently and wanted to be seen as normal.
Moved by the open sharing, Tay began to attend Wicare's counselling and group therapy programmes more frequently.
'This is a place where you can talk about death openly. It's not easy to talk about (such things elsewhere) because people don't know how to talk to you, which lines they cannot cross,' she said.
LEADING OTHERS THROUGH GRIEF
A few months after attending Wicare sessions, Tay volunteered as a befriender, offering a listening ear to newly bereaved widow. She has since befriendered several widows, walking the journey with them.
'When you put a widow beside another widow, even though you don't say anything, tears can just flow. You know you have gone through a similar journey,' she said.
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A year later, in 2019, Tay was invited to join the Wicare board. She and a few other board members set up a befriending framework and recruited befrienders.
She also enhanced its Children Grief Support Programme, which equips children whose fathers have died to process their grief through counselling, group therapy, and psychosocial therapies like ceramic and puppetry workshops.
This is an initiative under WiShine, a programme that supports widows and their children during their healing journey, and is funded by the Community Chest and SGSHARE, Community Chest's donation platform.
Tay brought the spirit of volunteerism into her family as well. Since 2020, she has involved her children, who are now 17, 25 and 26, in Wicare activities and events where they care for and interact with younger children through games, arts and craft, and conversation.
Because of her active volunteerism, Tay was appointed chairperson of Wicare in May.
'I used to be a very simple person. All I needed to do was to be a good mum to my kids. But after the loss, I see the world in a very different perspective. I now see that there are so many people who are going through losses. I also draw courage from every story I hear.
'Along the way, I am really glad to have come to this space where I can rediscover myself and do things that I would previously never do,' she said.
But no matter how many years have passed and how much she has changed, Tay still misses her husband dearly and tears when she thinks of their happy times.
What hurts, she said, is knowing that as her children grow up, she will walk the rest of the road without the man who had shared his life and built their family with her. In those moments, she is struck by a deep sense of loneliness, she said.