Tom Iljas and Liong May Swan had to cancel their original wedding ceremony owing to Covid-19. So they held the solemnisation in a hospital where ...
SINGAPORE: When 78-year-old Liong May Swan tied the knot with her sweetheart, 81-year-old Tom Iljas, her wedding accessories included a wheelchair with a strap around her waist, and a green wrist-band stating she was a “fall risk”.
“We didn’t know if there’ll be another stroke when we’re in Sweden. It was a race against time. I didn’t want to be separated without our relationship being legitimised.”A CHANCE ENCOUNTER The elderly couple knew their friendship had turned romantic when they realised they felt obliged to inform each other of their daily activities.
“She said, ‘Why’s the relationship like that, such that you have to make trips to Singapore? Father, you’re already old; why don’t you ask May Swan to live with you here?” he recounts. “When you marry somebody, you expect the other party to make you happy, but you can only make yourself happy. It doesn’t mean my husband will make me happy or your wife will make you happy.”Neither of them were planning on falling in love, much less getting into a decade-long courtship, after their respective partners had died in their old age.
Their decision to remain together since has been much more deliberate. It starts with embracing each other’s quirks, which enables the couple to fight well. Seeking common ground also means accepting that there are friends in each other’s network whom the other party dislikes. At first, this was an uncomfortable issue, but the pair eventually let it go since these were long-time friends.
Sexual attraction is still significant to them, but it has been long since it resembled the fleeting infatuation one experiences as a teenager. “He keeps saying, ‘You know, whatever I feel for you, I’ve shown it in my action.’ But I’m a writer — words are important to me. To him, words are almost nothing,” she says.He says: “I’ve never heard either of my parents say ‘I love you’. This is possibly why I don’t have the phrase in my dictionary. But there’s the word ‘commitment’. Whatever I say, I prove it and make it real.”
He handed her a cup of water, before proceeding to tease out the knots in her hair with a comb. After that, he accompanied her on her walk along the hospital corridors as part of her daily exercise.
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