Death
Wee died due to prostate cancer in his home on 2 May 2005 at 5:10am SST. He was 89. Before his death, he had asked to be cremated and for the ashes to be placed at Mandai Columbarium with those of ordinary citizens instead of Kranji War Cemetery, where late dignitaries are usually buried. His state funeral saw a large crowd who attended to pay their last respects at the Istana.
Wee was survived by his wife of 69 years, Koh Sok Hiong, son Bill Wee Hock Kee, six daughters, thirteen grandchildren, and fourteen great-grandchildren.
Read more about this topic: Wee Kim Wee
Famous quotes containing the word death:
“As deaths have accumulated I have begun to think of life and death as a set of balance scales. When one is young, the scale is heavily tipped toward the living. With the first death, the first consciousness of death, the counter scale begins to fall. Death by death, the scales shift weight until what was unthinkable becomes merely a matter of gravity and the fall into death becomes an easy step.”
—Alison Hawthorne Deming (b. 1946)
“Water, earth, air, fire, and the other parts of this structure of mine are no more instruments of your life than instruments of your death. Why do you fear your last day? It contributes no more to your death than each of the others. The last step does not cause the fatigue, but reveals it. All days travel toward death, the last one reaches it.”
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)
“Lo! Death has reared himself a throne
In a strange city lying alone
Far down within the dim West,
Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best
Have gone to their eternal rest.”
—Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849)