Mr and Mrs Lee.
61 years of happiness.
Mr Lee might have mentally prepared himself for this moment to come by.
Mrs Lee held on till yesterday for her husband and her loved ones.
after reading the online excerpts, many thoughts came to my mind.
but for one thing, I really admired Mr Lee's courage and his undying love for Mrs Lee, his life-long companion.

the thought of waiting, the thought of holding on. the thought of keeping himself occupied to stay away from negative thoughts. and the thought of losing her.
and when the moment finally arrived, the thought of learning to cope with the loss of someone so dear to him was yet another challenge.
the grief Mr Lee is suffering now is definitely immeasurable.
when daily routines like seeing her, talking to her, taking care of her and just staying beside her just seems so faraway now...

'I wanted someone my equal, not someone who was not really grown up and needed looking after. And I was not likely to find another girl who was my equal and shared my interests,'
-Mr Lee wrote in the first volume of his memoirs, 'The Singapore Story'.

Excerpts of MM Lee's remarks on his wife to NYT:
Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew, 87, was interviewed by Seth Mydans of The New York Times in Sept, during which he reflected on ageing, his legacy - and life with his wife, Madam Kwa Geok Choo, with whom he has had '61 years of happiness'.

MM told NYT that his most difficult moments come at the end of each day, as he sits by the bedside of his wife, 89, who has been unable to move or speak for more than two years. She had been by his side, a confidante and counsellor, since they were law students in London.

'She understands when I talk to her, which I do every night,' he said. 'She keeps awake for me; I tell her about my day's work, read her favourite poems.'

'She's at home. We've got a hospital bed and nurses attending to her. We used to share the same room. Now I'm staying in the next room. I have to get used to her groans and grunts when she's uncomfortable from a dry throat and they pump in a spray moisture called biothene which soothes her throat, and they suck out phlegm. Because she can't get up, she can't breathe fully. The phlegm accumulates in the chest but you can't suck it out from the chest, you've got to wait until she coughs. They suck it out, and she's relieved. They sit her up and tap her back. It's very distressing, but that's life.

NYT: Your daughter wrote a moving column in The Sunday Times about the situation. She wrote that the whole family suffers, of course, but the one who's been hurting the most and yet is carrying on stoically is my father.

MM Lee: What to do? What else can I do? I can't break down. Life has got to go on. I try to busy myself, but from time to time in idle moments, my mind goes back to the happy days when we were up and about together.

My daughter fished out many old photographs for this piece she wrote in The Sunday Times and picked out a dozen or two dozen photographs from the digital copies which somebody had kept at Singapore Press Holdings. When I looked at the photographs, I thought how lucky I was. I had 61 years of happiness.

We've got to go some time. I'm not sure who's going first, whether she or me. So I told her, I've been looking at the marriage vows of the Christians: 'To love, to hold and to cherish, in sickness and in health, for better or for worse, till death do us part.' I told her I would try and keep her company for as long as I could. She understood.

What to do? What can you do in this situation? I can say, get rid of the nurses. Then the maids won't know how to turn her over and then she gets pneumonia. That ends the suffering. But human beings being what we are, I do the best for her, and the best is to give her a competent nurse who moves her, massages her, turns her over, so no bed sores. Well, that's life. Make her comfortable.

One doctor told me, you may think that when she's gone you'll be relieved, but you'll be sad when she's gone. Because (now) there's still the human being here, there's still somebody you talk to and she knows what you're saying and you'll miss that. Well, I don't know, I haven't come to that, but I think I probably will because it's now been two years, two years and four months. It's become a part of my life.'