She raised 16 kids on 20 cents a day

She raised 16 kids on 20 cents a day
By April Chong

WOMAN OF SUBSTANCE: Madam Lim travelled from China to marry Mr Joseph Loh in 1936. They were both 17 years old at the time. -- PHOTO: COURTESY OF THE FAMILY OF MADAM LENA LIM

MARRIAGE had never figured in the mind of the young Lena Lim.

Born a Catholic and raised next to a convent in Swatow in China, she dreamt of becoming a nun. But she found herself matchmade at age 12, married at 17 and then a mother to 16 children.

All before she turned 42.

Last Wednesday, her 12 surviving children were summoned to see her in her Ang Mo Kio flat. She held out till past 7pm for the last child to arrive before closing her eyes for good. She died that day at age 90.

Her wake was attended by more than 300 people each day, so much so her children were kept on their feet taking people for a last look at their mother, and serving visitors with snacks and drinks.

About 150 mourners formed a snaking line behind her cortege yesterday. She was buried at Choa Chu Kang Christian Cemetery, where her husband had been laid to rest 26 years earlier.

'Although she had a hard life, she never complained and she taught us that no matter how poor we were, there were others worse off than us,' said Madam Lim's youngest child, 48-year-old author Joanna Loh.

At the age of 17, Madam Lim was put on a boat to Singapore to marry a man she had never met.

She narrowly missed the revolutionary war that broke out in her hometown and left her well-to-do family impoverished.

With her petite 50kg frame, family and friends always marvelled at how she could carry 16 children to term, having one almost every year.

Because of her strict Catholic views, contraception was not practised. Her large brood later gave her 22 grandchildren and six great grandchildren.

The transition from a luxurious life, where embroidering silk handkerchiefs was about the only chore for rich young girls, to being a mother in a new land was tough.

On just 20 cents a day from her husband, who was a clerk in the British Naval Base then, she brought up her brood and ran her household like clockwork.

To feed her family, she planted vegetables and reared chickens when they lived in her husband's family home in Hougang.

'She ran the family like a CEO,' said Madam Loh, recounting how the children were rostered to do household chores once they turned eight.

Although the family was poor, she refused an offer from a relative to buy one of her sons.

'Over my dead body,' she said in Teochew.

But she lost three of her own during World War II in the 1940s. They died of malnutrition and illness before they were even a year old.

The family moved from place to place in their early years as they could not afford their own home until her husband retired in 1971.

That was when they bought a semi-detached house in Changi with his pension pay-out. What she regretted was not being able to take her 500 pots of orchids collected during her kampung days in Hougang because the new place was too small.

Although poor, Madam Lim was still the epitome of the sio jia, or lady of leisure as the Teochews would say.

She never had a hair out of place, even though she could not afford expensive clothes or cosmetics.

She was haggard when she was young, but as her children grew up, she increasingly had more time and money to dress up.

'She was younger when she was older,' quipped Madam Loh.

Granddaughter Susanna Loh, 40, remembered how she used to play at her Ah Ma's dressing table, fascinated by her lipstick, powder and 'sexy' sarong kebayas.

She would do her hair in the salon and her sarong kebayas were always figure-hugging, she said.

She recalled with a smile: 'She was a very hip grandmother!'

After her husband died of a heart attack in 1982, she became active in church work. Having travelled only once - to the Philippines - up to then, she was urged by her children to 'see the world'.

And see the world she did - from the United States to the Middle East.

It was on one of these trips that she was reunited with her sisters in China - fully 50 years after she left her hometown. She was then 68.

Dementia started to set in when she was 78. She forgot who her children were and had regressed to a child-like state.

To celebrate the matriarch's ninth decade last year, family members threw a party with 120 guests. Her grandchildren even put up a band performance for her.

Although she could not recognise her family members and had become oblivious to her surroundings, family members recalled how she could still clap her hands during the party.

'We're glad we decided to do that. It was the last time we took a family photo together,' said Madam Loh.