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:
“I would not that death should take me asleep. I would not have him meerly seise me, and onely declare me to be dead, but win me, and overcome me. When I must shipwrack, I would do it in a sea, where mine impotencie might have some excuse; not in a sullen weedy lake, where I could not have so much as exercise for my swimming.”
—John Donne (c. 1572–1631)
“How I envy you death;
what could death bring,
more black, more set with sparks
to slay, to affright,
than the memory of those first violets.”
—Hilda Doolittle (1886–1961)
“He should be as vigorous as a sugar maple, with sap enough to maintain his own verdure,... and not like a vine, which being cut in the spring bears no fruit, but bleeds to death in the endeavor to heal its wounds.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)