KUALA LUMPUR: IN life, they were never apart. Today, however, Paul Rajasingam Sivagnanam and Mabel Anthonysamy will make the journey to their final resting place without their son Matthew Ezekial, who died with them on July 17.
The list of 20 names of Malaysians whose remains will arrive home today, 37 days after flight MH17 that they were in was shot down in eastern Ukraine, did not include Matthew, who was seated next to his mother during the trip home from Amsterdam.
Friends remember the small family as one that was always seen together. Paul Rajasingam was a Shell employee. Mabel was a lecturer.
Matthew’s former church teacher, Maria Lorena, who attends the same church as the Sivagnanams, said while it was a blessing that Paul and Mabel’s remains were coming home, it pained her to learn that Matthew’s remains were still lying in a foreign land, nowhere near his parents’.
“They were always together. Mabel and Matthew would follow Paul every time he went abroad.
“I was very close to Mabel as we would discuss Matthew a lot especially on his missed classes when he travels with the family.
“She had a very strong bond with Matthew. I can’t imagine how sad it would be for Mabel that her son would not be with them on their final journey,” she said when met at the church.
It is understood that Paul’s brother was in Amsterdam to arrange for the repatriation of his brother’s family’s remains.
Maria said Matthew, who was 9 when he died, had a twin brother who died years ago. It was from that moment, she said, that Mabel never let Matthew out of her sight.
“She would usually come to me and hold my hand gently and apologised for Matthew’s absence from Sunday class.
“In our conversations, she would always tell me how much she loved her son and that she couldn’t tear herself from him.
“So much so that she volunteered as a teacher, so that she had something worthwhile to do while waiting for him to finish his class.
“One image that is always before my eyes is his smile, which looks exactly like his mother’s.”
Maria, who wept as she spoke of Matthew, described him as talkative and playful.
“It is hard for us at the church to accept that this beautiful family is gone, in a way that was so tragic.
“It is so heart-wrenching to think that the life of little Matthew was taken away that way,” she said, adding that more than 1,000 people attended their memorial service at the church on Aug 1.
Maria is keeping the one piece of Matthew’s homework which she didn’t get to hand over to Mabel, to remember her pupil by.
Maria said Paul’s brother said during the service that Paul was looking forward to see him at 6am when he arrived.
Besides the Sivagnanams, Maria who works as an orthodontist also knows Ng Lye Ti Elizabeth, 30, another passenger of MH17. “Elizabeth was my patient and she came to my clinic five years ago to fit braces.
“She came on March 10 to take it off and I told her she could now be a model as she really looked good.
“She just laughed and said ‘No’. I can’t believe that that day was her last goodbye.”
Maria also said she was the one who handed Elizabeth’s dental records for her identification in the Netherlands.
“Two officers came on July 24 to take her dental mould.”
Elizabeth’s remains will arrive today. Her year-old son’s (Benjamin Lee Jian Han) and her sister’s (Ng Shi Ing, 33) will not.