April 23, 2018, 11:56 PM 
Kathy Ong, the 19-year-old National University of Singapore student killed in a tragic car accident in Clementi, had previously written a profound and eloquent reflection that imagined her own funeral and what it would be like.
The four-paragraph reflection was printed on a board and displayed at her wake, as photos shared online by her father showed:
"Inauspicious"
Her father, Keith Ong, wrote in his Facebook post that it initially felt "inauspicious" for his daughter to be writing about her own death when she penned the message.
However, he said he is now thankful given the transcendent nature of her prose, owing to the suddenness of her demise.
One segment of Kathy's writing that was lucid but premonitory reads:
"Time is merciless, they think, not at all fair, let alone too fair the way their daughter had lamented, because how could enough be given to them yet so little to their only child, such that they lived to watch her die?"
And in another part of her reflection, she penned this poignant paragraph:
"Everything in this hall has a time limit -- the blooming of the flowers, my physical body, people's presence, and their memory of me. But, me, I am no longer bound by time. Now isolated from the rest of my community, does time still have a purpose for me? From this point on, whether or not I do not know, but I know not time the way I used to before."
Here's her reflection in full:
People talk in hushed, respectful, comforting voices, conscious of my absence, but they will come to terms with this funeral and relax in abit, and normal conversation will resume in the presence of others they might not have seen in awhile. A funeral serves as a rather efficient gathering. My parents stand close by; they are my biggest sorrow, but I will not get to that. Time is merciless, they think, not at all fair, let alone too fair the way their daughter had lamented, because how could enough be given to them yet so little to their only child, such that they lived to watch her die? If one, however were to believe in destiny, that one's entitled time was predetermined from the beginning, then maybe there is fairness in that every moment of time felt longer to me than it did for them, or some other reasons related to perception of time.
Everything in this hall has a time limit -- the blooming of the flowers, my physical body, people's presence, and their memory of me. But, me, I am no longer bound by time. Now isolated from the rest of my community, does time still have a purpose for me? From this point on, whether or not I do not know, but I know not time the way I used to before.
I had to take a break before writing this part; though short, writing my own funeral was quite an out-of-body experience, emotionally rather draining. There were a lot of pauses before I wrote, a lot of images in my head, such that those short paragraphs -- now that I look at the clock -- took me 2 hours to write. And I've missed my friend's request for lunch."
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Background
Kathy Ong was in a taxi with three other friends when it got into an accident.
She was one of its rear-seat passengers.
The collision occurred at the intersection of Clementi Road and Commonwealth Avenue West. The taxi was turning right after another car when a car travelling straight sped forward and rammed into the taxi's left side, sending both vehicles spinning.
The environmental studies undergraduate, an only child, was in her first year of university, and was a resident of Tembusu College, where she and her friends were headed after running errands on Thursday night, April 19, 2018.
Both drivers and the four students were taken to the National University Hospital, where Kathy succumbed to her injuries.
Her three friends are still in hospital, with unspecified injuries.
Top photo via Keith Ong's Facebook post
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