For here we stand, my dearest friends.

I put on a black dress today. It had lace and satin.

6am. As my mind surfaced to consciousness, I could hear the national anthem playing softly from the kitchen. And I knew. I don't know how I knew. I just did. Mr Lee Kuan Yew had died.

My mum wailed.

This had happened before. In the stillness of the afternoon, as the children lay in neat rows under their tiny blankets, the national anthem wafted quietly through our classroom windows from the secondary school opposite. As usual, I was pretending to sleep, peeking through unstrained eyes to observe the waking world as the children napped. And I saw my teachers sobbing in huddle, softly and controlled, making sure not to wake the class. Even though I didn't understand why they felt so bereaved for the man named Ong Teng Cheong, I ducked beneath my blanket and cried. And I felt a loss in my 5-year-old heart I couldn't grapple with.

Once again, the sentimentality of the occasion today is lost on me. I wasn't there to witness his brilliance firsthand. I was born into a prosperous nation. It's difficult for me to imagine it was anything but. I was here and it was there.

But I wore black today, all the same. Because he was important, if not to me, then to my parents, to the people who knew him, and to Singapore. And I just pray that he's made it to heaven. That he sits, finally at peace, with his wife next to him.