Chapter 1: Death is a Distant Peace

I BEGAN to really live the day I was told I may soon die. One moment I was William de Cruz, the next I was gone, someone new stepped in. 9 November 2017 became the start of a journey that rebuilt my life. I was diagnosed with what some in the medical profession call the most dangerous cancer known, aggressive, insidious, invasive, potentially fatal. I am in remission as I write this, and I have never felt better about myself.

I was born on 25 June 1957, baptised a Catholic, the child of Malaysian-born parents. We have identity cards in Malaysia, which list name, father’s name, date of birth, race, religion and address. Hence, I am Malaysian by birth and citizenship, Indian by race, Malayalee by ethnicity.

Mum and I in 1958.

My maternal and paternal grandparents were from Kerala, a south-western state in India that holds the distinction of being the first geopolitical territory in all the world to have freely elected a communist government. In a country that has delivered 10 Nobel laureates, the state of Kerala has the highest literacy and numeracy levels. I have great respect for and am very proud of Kerala and its people.

As a Catholic, I received the sacrament of First Holy Communion at seven, took the name Martin for my Confirmation, at 12 years of age, thereby becoming a soldier of Christ.

The Higher School Certificate was my highest qualification when I entered full-time employment, as a journalist with Malaysia’s English-language daily, The New Straits Times. Two years before that, I had begun working life as a performing musician, playing guitar and singing folk songs, country & western, pop and a bit of rock & roll at Underground, one of the earliest pubs in Malaysia’s capital, Kuala Lumpur. I picked up the guitar early, discovered music composition almost by accident and wrote my first song before I turned 18. Music is a cornerstone in my life.

In 1980, I married Helen Heng Tsu Lin, a girl from Kuantan, on Malaysia’s east coast. Helen’s IC records her as Heng Toch Len, but she told me of “Tsu Lin” early in our courtship. “Tsu Lin” is how her name is pronounced in Mandarin (“Toch Len” being Hainanese), and I have always preferred it over her official name. “Tsu Lin” means elegant bells.

Helen and I - Sydney, August 2017.

Our first child, a boy, born prematurely on 29 August 1983, lived only a few hours. While he still had the breath of life, I christened him with the sign of the Cross on his forehead, and we named him Christian. Helen and I now have three lovely children. We migrated from Malaysia with our Malaysian-born sons, David and Benjamin, in 1990, to Sydney; Sara was born in Australia in 1994. Since migrating, Australia has been our other home. I have worked here, as a public servant and a journalist.

In 2013, I became the founding president of a non-government organisation (NGO) called Global Bersih. It is the global arm of the most influential NGO in Malaysia, Bersih, which was set up and continues as a lobbyist for free and fair elections, human rights, equality for all Malaysians.

Bersih is a coalition of like-minded NGOs that has never registered as an organisation with the Registrar of Societies in Malaysia. It means the RoS cannot exert official control over Bersih. The coalition remains the only group capable of moving hundreds of thousands of Malaysians to take to the streets to demand justice and fairness, peacefully.

Global Bersih was formalised as an organisation in Geneva, Switzerland, and operated out of Sydney. We chose Geneva because it was literally close to where the UN was domiciled, and official representations to UN rapporteurs were part of our plan. Formalisation was made easier because one of our steering committee lived and worked there.

   Bersih rally at Town Hall Square, Sydney,
   on 29 August 2015 (Bersih Sydney picture).

At the time I was president, Dr Andrew Foong was secretary, Praveen Nagappan treasurer. Malaysians have come from far behind in the fight for justice, we have won and we have lost, but we have not given up.

My father, Eric Ross Peter de Cruz, died in 1963. He was 37, I was six. My only sibling, elder brother Errol, was 59 when he went in 2013. My mother, Margarita, left me in 2015. She was 86. I am the last in the de Cruz line Dad and Mum began.

My mother was one of 11 siblings. Including Errol and I, there were 26 first cousins — three have passed away. In the next generation, including all our children, 27 have been added to the family tree. To my great and lasting regret, I know very little of the people on my father’s side, apart from his parents and two sisters. I miss Dad, Mum and Errol dearly. They would have been strong for me. But I am glad they have been spared knowing and living with my diagnosis.

In late 2017, I became a different person entirely. I would not be this person if not for the cancer. I can’t say I wish I had not contracted the disease, because I am what I am now, and if not for that threat to life and living, more than likely I would have remained in a cocoon, not destined to become WdC V-2, the strongest version of myself.

Neither is it strange to feel this way. Being happy is not strange, and I am happy. Most days now, the warmest wind blows gently in my soul, and I believe in the omnipresence of human possibility. I don’t know how long I have, but whatever time remains, I know the person I now am is the man I want to be, the human being I am meant to be. Physically, psychologically, emotionally, spiritually, I have never been more comfortable with myself, more embracing of my very own nature, gratified, joyous to be in this place I have arrived at. This is the human destination I didn’t know I should have headed for.

It will soon be about three years since I faced the likelihood that death was as imminent as the rain that follows darkest cloud, rolling thunder, blinding lightning. I have stepped from a devastating diagnosis to a state of being that is better than anything I have ever felt in my life. I began writing this on 7 June 2019, the day my marriage to Helen turned 39.

In the course of my writing, 44 years have come and gone since Elvis Aaron Presley passed on. It has been 75 years since Little Boy was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, by the United States of America. Three days later, the second bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. More than 200,000 people in Japan were killed by these two atomic bombs, and most were civilians. The bombings mark the only times the US has used nuclear weaponry in armed conflict. No other nation in the world has ever committed such an act.

Kris Kristofferson is approaching 85. Bob Dylan has issued the best collection of songs since Blood on the Tracks, four years since being awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Leonard Cohen, who passed on more than four years ago, said that Dylan’s recognition, coming about 60 years since he began performing in Greenwich Village, New York, was a bit like “naming Mount Everest the tallest mountain in the world”.

On 8 November 2020, Joe Biden was declared president-elect of the USA. Kamala Harris, an American descendant of a Jamaican father and South Indian mother, became the first woman to enter the White House as vice-president elect. Donald Trump used his time till Inauguration Day on 20 January 2021 to cement his image as the most repugnant president the US has let loose on world order and a universal understanding of human decency.

My Malaysiakini story on the historic
Opposition win in the 2018 election.

Less than 50 days after I underwent about nine hours of surgery, the people of Malaysia overthrew a government that had ruled uninterrupted for nearly 61 years. That government had seen to it that Malaysians would suffer a severely compromised judicial system, rigged elections, a military and police service subservient to corruption in highest office, racism, the oppression of all religions other than Islam. Not one drop of blood was shed when Malaysians voted in the Coalition of Hope on 9 May 2018. The day after, I submitted a commentary to news website Malaysiakini, in which I referred to the achievement as a “gold standard” in the democratic process for all the world to see. Less than two years after that, the prime minister of the new government tendered his resignation, along with that of every member of cabinet. He was 93 at the time, and it was the second occasion he had risen to Malaysia’s highest office. History lists him as the oldest person to become PM. Many Malaysians remember him with hatred. His resignation opened the door to an illegitimate regime that stepped into the political vacuum and showed itself to be racist, incompetent and untrustworthy in the eyes of many.

Some four months before our 40th wedding anniversary, the human race found itself engulfed by the Covid-19 pandemic. More than 475,000 Americans have died because of the disease or related complications, many of them because they can’t afford medical treatment in the US health system. In the country of my ancestors, India, 155,000 have died. Nearly 2.4 million have perished worldwide. Malaysia's new government is hopelessly out of its depth amid the onslaught.

I don’t think we’ll ever return to the normal we used to know. For me, “normal” flew out the window in late 2017. I am more prepared to stare down a potentially fatal virus than most people. As mortality stares me in the face, every six months somebody in my medical team tells me if my lease on life has been extended another six. The building blocks of my life are now measured by the half-year, nothing is taken for granted, I pray that today will better than yesterday, that tomorrow will be better than today. I don’t know how long I have, but I have been saved, and I will keep walking this thanksgiving journey, one day at a time, for the rest of my life.

I had to be brought to my knees to learn how to stand properly. I had to nearly die to be re-born. I had to reduce myself to nothing in order to make something of myself. If there is anything here that speaks to the idea of ego, it is that ego has been cast aside. I have no need of it.

I am not preaching to you or trying to convert you. I am here to testify that God made his presence known to me, just when I was most in need. God has always been with me. I know that now. Human conceit left me deaf to the knocks on the door. The idea of death, that life is finite, has made every day precious beyond measure.

I have learnt that caring for others more than for myself is the best way to nurse and enrich the soul. I am not alone. I know it. Beyond the most loving wife I could ever wish for, our three children, a wonderful, noisy, loving extended family, my in-laws, my friends, beyond all that, when it is only me, I am not alone. I am still afraid, the darkest fears still visit, and that’s perfectly OK. It's OK to be afraid. It’s comforting to know this. Death is a distant peace.

The Heng-dC clan in Sydney, 2015: Helen and I with (from left) Sara, David and Benjamin.