Thomas Tsang remembers perfectly the day his son died.

It was Apr. 24, 2018.

Jonathan, 23, was in his second year at the National University of Singapore (NUS). He was doing well, with an exchange programme to Japan lined up. His future looked bright.

Like any other day, he had kaya toast with his parents at Ya Kun. They chatted for a while, and after breakfast, they drove him to Bukit Panjang MRT station.

“Love you, son,” Thomas said before dropping him off. “Love you, Pa. Love you, Ma,” Jonathan replied.

That night, Thomas and his wife received a call from the police. It was an urgent matter concerning Jonathan, they said. Get to the police station as soon as possible.

When they arrived, it was late at night. Jonathan’s girlfriend and his oldest brother were already there.

As a nameless, hopeless panic crept over him, the investigation officer broke the news to them: Jonathan had taken his own life.

A nightmare

Thomas’s first reaction was sheer disbelief.

“It was shocking. It was unbelievable. I absolutely did not want to believe anything that she said,” he said. “Because, come on, in the morning, it was a great breakfast. Nothing was amiss.”

Jonathan had been working out recently. Over breakfast, he’d complained about some muscle pain, and gave his dad the name card of his physiotherapist. If he ever had any problems with his body, look him up, Jonathan advised.

That just hours later, his own body would be found shattered at the base of a building, was inexplicable. Thomas’s mother, Jonathan’s grandmother, even wondered if there’d been foul play.

The first days after the death were the worst. There was the flurry of phone calls: family members, church members, friends. After the funeral and cremation, Thomas called a family meeting.

“All of us were still trying to figure out how best to move on…I [confessed] to my family that I felt helpless. I felt inadequate, as a father, as a husband,” he said.

Just a year before, Thomas had retired from his job to care for his wife with Parkinson’s and pursue his longtime passion of clinical counselling. It was a natural switch. He’d spent his life counselling, on an informal basis, his peers and friends.

But he hadn’t noticed his own son’s invisible anguish. What made it worse was that, till today, nobody — not even Jonathan’s then-girlfriend — knows why he did what he did.

In the face of such unfathomable tragedy, Thomas’ instinct was to keep everything on the inside, and be strong for his wife and children.

But on the inside, “I felt [myself] rotting away,” he said.

Healing

Thomas finally plucked up the courage to write to Samaritans of Singapore (SOS), a suicide prevention service, and ask to join a support group.

To his surprise, he was rejected. “I was kind of dumbfounded,” he said. But the rep explained why: he was in no condition to join the support group, and needed one-to-one counselling first.

After an initial struggle, he agreed. The counselling saved him, even as it was agonising. His instinct was to protect his family from his own vulnerabilities.

Instead, he had to talk about how much he missed his son, how terrible he felt, in front of them. Over and over again.

But day by day, the family grew into their fragile new shape. They learnt to talk about Jonathan again, weave him into their conversations, recall fond memories.

Some things were beyond mending. Till this day, Thomas and his wife do not celebrate their wedding anniversary, as it was just 10 days before their son’s death. Their last photo as a family was taken that day, over a steamboat dinner.

During the worst times, their good friends from church would stay with Thomas and his wife. “Thomas, just let us know what we can do and we’ll be there,” they’d say. He found this the most comforting; they didn’t say much, just made sure they were around.

But others were less helpful. “I have this very good friend, who came up to me and said ‘I’m so sorry Thomas, but you know, be comforted that you still have three other sons’,” he recalled.

“Now that was not helpful. Just because I had four sons, losing one is expendable? That was crazy.”

Growth

Seven years on, Thomas has finished his counselling studies. He’s a full-time counsellor at the Eagles Mediation & Counselling Centre (EMCC), and hopes to inspire others to not suffer in silence.

Especially with men, “don’t play the hero”, he advised. Get help if you need. He speaks from experience.

At home, he values his family a lot more, and he’s also learnt an important lesson: loving your children, and knowing them, are two different things.

“Just because we love them, doesn’t mean that we know them enough [for them] to trust us. As parents, we need to really be in their presence — not push, not demand, but to listen. To really listen,” he said.

The house is quieter now. Back when all four of his sons were around, they’d game late into the night together. Thomas remembers how he’d get upset whenever they woke him up with their rowdiness. Jonathan, always the life of the party, would get especially loud.

But he was also tender in his own way.

“[The thing I miss most is] his smile,” Thomas said. “Whenever we were getting ready to go to bed, sometimes he’d come back late and he would still come into our room and greet us.”

Thomas still keeps Jonathan’s old phone. All his messages are still there, and sometimes he looks at the phone and feels “almost as though he’s still alive”.

“[I’d like to] tell him that I still miss him a lot,” he said. “I can’t [think of] anything better than to have all my four sons together.”

Hey son, I miss you. How about coming back to play Counter-Strike with your brothers, and you all can shout as loud as you can, and I promise I won’t come out of the room and shout at you to stop the ruckus!”