Death is a shock when you are unprepared for it. It is an even bigger blow when it is someone you know, whether closely, or through acquaintance. At least there is some kind of relationship.

The death of A/P Ananda Rajah hit me this way.

He was one of my lecturers for the Singapore Society course. I’ve seen him on three occasions, the final being the exam where I sat on the second row from the invigilators’ table.

But the death hit hard, because we had a lecturer-student relationship, even though he wasn’t my tutor. And he was a sprightly man, still well.

And he goes so abruptly like that.

You can prepare for the death of a terminally ill person, because the doctor has forewarned you, “He/She has not much time to live.” And so you can prepare yourself mentally.

You can prepare for the death of a person who has lived past the age of hundred, because his/her body is gradually wearing out and will eventually lose its function.

Signs of illness and gradual weakness signal the impending end.

But for a seemingly healthy person to go – and being someone I know – it is like being struck on the head by an apple, like how Newton experienced it. He never saw it coming. It came, hit him, and he received that impact of realisation.

I felt exactly the same way two years ago when SSG Lim Poh Keng died in a motorbike accident. Sergeant Lim had brought our section on one of the insertions into the Bruneian jungle when we when there to cut trees to expand the landing sites for the Air Force helicopters. During the 46 days there everyone developed friendships with one another – the commander-men barrier eroded and was sometimes swept under the carpet, at least out in the field. When Sergeant Lim passed on from a motorbike accident, even us who hadn’t been under him prior to Brunei went to pay their respects as well, because he had left a mark on us through our interactions in Brunei. He is someone we conversed with and gradually got to know. When I received news that he had passed on, immediately images of him when he was still alive flashed through my mind. There is the conflict of watching the dead body with the movie in the mind of him still alive.

We should learn let go of people we know when they are near their impending end, but how do we let go when they go suddenly without any final warning? How do we prepare ourselves?