The first time I felt God speak to me clearly was the day before my beloved mother was taken off the incubator in the ICU.

I was on a 13-hour flight from London to Singapore, rushing home to see my mother one last time. I had my sleeping mask on, my eyes tightly shut, and I cried silent tears amid a restless sleep.

At 57 years old, my mother had suffered a second stroke unexpectedly when I was completing my second year at university in the UK.

At that point, my father and older brother were in Singapore with my mother. While it was a second stroke, it was still unexpected for my family.

Grace (centre) with her family in Europe in 2018.

By God’s grace, she had experienced a complete recovery from her first stroke in 2016, after months of difficult physiotherapy sessions and medication.

After my mother’s first stroke, she had managed to retain the full range of her cognitive abilities and the full mobility of her body.

At the point of her second stroke, she was consistently taking her medications and keeping track of her own health indicators, with frequent routine checkups at the hospital.

Due to her seemingly miraculous healing and smooth recovery process, nobody in my family expected her to suddenly have a second stroke.

Nothing made sense.

Just three days ago, my mother was fine. We had even talked briefly on the phone when she had misdialed my WhatsApp by accident. I had asked my mother grumpily why she had called me at such an ungodly hour – 2AM in the morning.

At that moment, I did not know that this was one of the last times I would ever talk to her.

I will never forget that phone call, and the memory of its lingering bitter taste of regret.

I was stuck in a liminal space with no way to travel back in time.

This is a nightmare.

I was so exhausted; I had not had a good sleep for the past three days. I could not sleep as my thoughts were all over the place. The whole situation was so surreal. I held my breath and let darkness engulf me.

My first dream

But I believe God spoke to me with dreams.

In the first dream I had just before my mother’s passing, a young seven-year-old girl walked over to me and started speaking to me.

At that point, I could not fully comprehend her words. I started tearing up in a panic, repeatedly asking her what she had said to me.

Grace (middle) with her mother and older brother.

Then suddenly, I could hear her clearly.

“Your mother is in Christ’s heavenly arms,” she repeated. 

At that moment, I was in disbelief and my mind was in denial.

This cannot be true. There must be a miracle for my mother. Everyone had been praying for a miracle, surely, we still had some hope.

Her words were meant to be words of comfort. But at that moment, they felt like a confirmation of my mother’s impending death.

When the girl saw that I had heard her previous words, she continued: “The Father loves you very much and wants you to stop keeping your distance from Him.”

I could do nothing else but fall to my knees and begin bawling.

Just two days after that dream, the medical doctors declared my mother brain dead, and she was shortly moved out of the ICU.

This is a story that took me 18 months to finally write.

After it happened, I felt led to testify to God’s goodness and grace in my life. Yet for the past one-and-a-half years, I never had the strength to go about telling the story publicly.

In the weeks and months following my mother’s death, these dreams became my source of courage and hope, tiding me through the most painful period of my life.

Whenever I falter, whenever I feel lost and whenever I am in pain, I revisit this precious dream and think about nothing else but God’s goodness to me.

Grace and her mother on their way to visit their extended family in Indonesia during Chinese New Year in 2016. This was their yearly tradition.

In hindsight, I quickly realised that having that dream the night before my mother was pronounced brain dead by the hospital was God’s greatest grace for me. He prepared my heart for what was to come and, in a way, he delivered a message to me personally before anyone else did. He broke the news to me and did not forget to comfort me tenderly.

In a sense, it was also a promise and reassurance to me that my mother is now in God’s good hands.

My mother was a devout Christian and has faithfully pursued God for most of her adult years. Yet because I love her so much, I could not help worrying about her destination after death.

God knew my anxieties and reassured me before I even had the chance to start worrying.

After that dream, I still had a few more regarding my mother. Unfortunately, my last moments with my mother were ridden with uncertainty, anxiety and regrets. Due to the Covid situation, I faced strict restrictions surrounding the visit of my mother in the hospital.

I appealed to the Ministry of Health (MOH) and requested for a hospital visit on compassionate grounds. After a few correspondences with them and two negative swab test results, I managed to my relief to get my appeal to visit my mother approved by MOH.

There were still restrictions I had to comply with and understandably so. I understood that I was coming from the UK, a country with high numbers of Covid cases at that point and these restrictions were put in place to protect everyone.

But it did not change the fact that it was such a difficult time for me. I was allowed an hour with my mother.

“You have to keep your mask on and stand here,” a nurse pointed to the corner of the ICU. “You cannot touch Mummy …”

She teared up, her voice shaky.

It hurt so much, but I was so grateful for the tears of a compassionate stranger.

The hospital staff and our case worker knew about the whole situation and were incredibly sympathetic — the case worker and nurses actually cried when they finally met me after days of conversing through phone calls.

But rules were rules, there was only so much they could do for me. In the end, I could only see my then-unconscious mother for an hour, two feet away.

I could not even touch her one last time.

That hour, I told her everything that I had been feeling. I apologised to her for all the times I was not loving, for all the times I could have hurt her with my words and for all the times I was selfish. For not being around in her last moments, for leaving her when I could have stayed in Singapore, for how our last phone call ended.

I told her all about my tiring journey back home, how much I missed her and how long it has been since we last spoke on the phone. I told her how God fulfilled my request for a hotel room with a balcony for my 21 days of quarantine and the dream that I had on the plane.

I had so much to say to her but, in the end, I could do nothing else but pray to God and worship in the ICU.

When I left, I was disturbed because I was feeling unsure if my mother even heard what I told her as she was in a coma.

My second dream

About one or two days after I visited my mom, I met her in my dreams again. I remember looking at her in my dream and asking her: “When are you leaving?”  

She had replied: “Not sure, but soon.”

I knew this was a dream and that she had already passed.

I was very aware of our imminent separation. Heartbroken, I gave her the longest, tightest and warmest hug of my life.

Throughout my life, her hugs tided me through many difficult days. I never thought I could have the chance to experience a hug from her ever again this last time.

Strangely enough, in the dream, I could sense her vividly as if she were really there with me. That was the warmest hug I have ever gotten.

I could not help but ask her about my main worry: “Did you hear everything I said to you in the hospital?”

In the dream, my mother replied that she did hear me, but everything was so muffled because of the face mask I had on and the distance between us. This answer was so funny to me, and I still break into laughter whenever I think about this.

One of my biggest living regrets was not being able to feel the warmth of her skin one last time.

Somehow, the warm hug in that dream did provide me with some comfort. Since then, whenever I recall those last moments with her, while I cry at the pain, I also smile at how good God is to me. He is a God who comforts.

Is God really speaking to me?

God speaks to all of us in a multitude of unique ways. He is a personal God and speaks to us in ways we can understand and relate to greatly.

Yet, it is also important to not fall into the trap of dream interpretations and New Age spirituality, which can often seem so alluring when talking about topics like dreams.

More often than not, those dreams are not from God but our mind’s way of processing our thoughts and emotions. How, then, can we know if God is speaking to us through a dream?

I would like to reiterate three simple ways to check if your dream is from God:

1. Verify it with God

As believers, it is important for us to consistently pray in all circumstances.

If you think that God is telling you something in the dream, pray about it to Him and ask for His confirmation objectively.

Make sure that it is what God is telling you and not what you desire to hear.

You should be able to feel the peace of God, which will guide you in your situation.

2. Ask yourself if the message you obtained in the dream aligns with Scripture

The Scripture should take precedence over every other thing.

There should not be any new, hidden secret of humanity that God is only sharing with you, which opposes the Scripture that He has given us.

3. Is the meaning clear to you?

If God wants to tell you something, He will make the message very clear so you cannot misunderstand His intentions.

He will likely speak of the issue directly and leave no room for ambiguity.

If you are still a little uncertain, go back to the first point and pray about it until you are at peace.

A eulogy for my mother

I attended my mother’s funeral virtually a few days after the hospital visit.

I chose not to give a eulogy during her funeral. Instead, my brother spoke at the funeral.

It was partly because I was in quarantine then and I could not attend it in person. But mostly, it was because I could not talk about her.

I was definitely not ready to show the world my pain.

All I wanted to do was to retreat to my safe corner and lick my wounds in silence.

But now I do not want her memories to fade, and I want people around me to know how much she had impacted me.

I want people to know her stories and the beautiful soul she was.

An old photo of Grace’s family celebrating her birthday together.

I shall end with a short eulogy I wish I had the courage to articulate 18 months ago:

My mother was a monumental part of my life. How do I even begin to describe who she was to me?

She was an excellent cook and everyone who ate her cooking loved the food she made. In fact, I can sometimes taste her emotions in the food she makes.

It is hard to explain but her food always tasted so full of love and, on the rare occasion when she she was upset or tired, I could tell.

She had a quirk – we always lamented that the sambal chili she made could never taste spicy (even if she was using bird chilies) and joked that this was due to her extremely good temper.

She had green fingers and she loved taking care of the plants at home.

When I was a child, she would often see pots of withering plants in the communal bins and bring them all home to nurse them back to health.

Once, she brought back a pot of an unknown plant that had lost all its leaves. Within days, the plant revived and started sprouting. After a few more weeks, flower buds appeared.

When they bloomed, I realised to my pleasant surprise that it was a beautiful pot of white orchids. She had a nurturing touch and always grew beautiful plants.

When I was a young child, I could not pronounce certain Mandarin words properly. My extended relatives, while not intending to be malicious, would laugh at my speech and treat it as a joke.

When I was older, my mother shared with me that she was extremely upset at them as it had hurt my self-confidence at my young age. Despite her anger, she did not do anything rash nor radical. Instead, she sat me down every day and spend numerous hours enunciating those difficult words with me to correct my pronunciation.

Afterwards, I never again had an issue with my speech.

She really loved me. When I was experiencing difficulties with school and was going through a tough time, I would cry to her. I remember she would always hold me tight for a long time.

Afterwards, I would lay on my bed in the dark, sleepless with anxiety.

Thinking that I was fast asleep, my mother would come into my room, put her hands on my head and pray over me in Bahasa, her native mother tongue. I would then fall asleep peacefully, listening to the soft timbre of her voice as she prayed.

When she started getting sicker and was in lots of pain after her first stroke, she would ask me to pray for her and remarked to me that my prayers were special as they always made her feel so much better.

My mother took on many roles – she was my support, my counsel, my best friend, my support, a dutiful daughter, a beloved sister, a loving wife, and my precious mother.

Most importantly, she was a prayer warrior through her joys and sorrows. She was a woman with a very strong faith in Jesus and had her identity firmly rooted in Christ.

Eighteen months on, I can say that grief is an uninvited guest that has since become my confidante.

My experience with grief has changed me completely. I still struggle greatly with the loss of my mother and there are days when it feels like I am not strong enough to go on. In my moments of doubt, uncertainty and loneliness following my mother’s death, I actively choose to lean back in Christ’s loving arms.

While it hurts to remember her, I fear forgetting even more.

Perhaps that is why I desperately try to capture her with my clumsy words.

I want to celebrate her amazing life by living mine the way she had lived – so filled with prayer, love, courage and wisdom from God.

FOR MORE STORIES: 

“Sometimes I call out ‘Mummy’ just to see how it sounds again”: How a daughter dealt with the sudden death of her mother

His 15-year-old sister died after collapsing in school; but in his grief, he found unexpected comfort

“Death is not the end”: A mother consoles others at the wake of her son