Second Dawn

The minute I saw the write-up on this book in the papers a few weeks ago, I went to hunt it down because I just had to get it. "Second Dawn" is written by Kevin Tye's father, Tye Kim Khiat. The story is about Kevin's grim contest with cancer. He received this news 5 months before his wedding day, and it journals his struggles til he breathed his last. Not just his struggles, but how his faith strengthened him in his end days. Kevin was just 28 years old when he passed away. He resided in Melb when his family migrated when he was young. Perhaps it was whole identification wif the victim thing that caused me to buy it. When i bought it, I finished it in 2 nights. The 1st chapter almost left me in tears.

Here's a quote from the book:

"As parents, we have not finished the course; Kevin has. His spiritual sprint leaves us panting in his wake. The torch he has passed on is ours to bear. His path we will tread and we know he would dearly want us to hold aloft his torch to light our way – and for all those who want to believe – so that we, too, can cross the finishing line as he did.

Kevin weighted in at 4.3 kg (9.5 pounds) at 6.10 am Singapore time on December 4, 1976, and departed at 1.50 am Australian time on April 29, 2006. From dawn to dawn, from dust to dust, a painful chapter ends, a new one unfolds: his second dawn is for all eternity.

His body had quickly turned cold – and stiff. We bade him good-night for the last time. As we stepped out of the now all-too-familiar Boxhill Hospital into the cold autumn morning, we knew that our second dawn could be on the horizon some day if we stayed the course and kept to the straight and narrow path that our son had blazed for us – so that we could meet again.

Soon, Kevin’s unswerving faith, like the red ball of the rising sun tinged with gold, would climb high into the sky to shine as our beacon.”

It was about Kevin's death, but more than that, it was about his faith. About how even as he faced pain and death, he testified to the promise of eternal life which he was all-ready for. The only reason he could have the strength in his last days was because he held fast to his faith in Christ.

It was a simple story of an ordinary man in an ordinary family.

Yet he probably never realised how his life has been chronicled by his father and read by many many out there.