"It's love of the highest order."

I was born into the late 1980s, so Dr. Goh Keng Swee was as close as a stranger to me. It was only after his demise that his name started to gain familiarity with me. Everything that he had done for the nation was well beyond what many overachievers had accomplished, and it is him that we all young citizens owe a beautiful and well-developed country to. The words of Mrs Goh Keng Swee in the Insight section of today's Straits Times caught me; it looked at the life of the Gohs from a different perspective, particularly the relationship they shared, even until Dr. Goh's departure.

It was a love of a different kind; the kind Mrs Goh said yes to even though she knew her prospective husband was diagnosed with bladder cancer. Yes, it would be rightful of every wife to put in immaculate effort to take care of her ailing husband, but how many had faltered along the way? She didn't. She didn't think about putting him in the hands of care-givers. She didn't think about letting others run chores for her when it came to buying supplies for her husband.

"My preoccupation was, as long as he was happy and comfortable, it was contentment for me."

And their love runs deep, evidently, as friends and as man and wife.

"During his last few days, I wanted to test his hearing because sometimes, earwax would block his ear passage. So I jokingly told him that I was going to leave him. Immediately, he answered, 'No! No! No!", and even gestured with his hands."

When a person's a good leader, it's important that everyone is unanimous about it. But when it comes to love, it only takes one person to decide whether he/she is the one worth spending one's whole life with.

"Will I miss him? What do you think? I've lived the past 20 years of my life just for him. I don't know what will happen next."

I teared when after reading the last line, because to lose the love of your life is simply too agonising to contemplate.

"It's love of the highest order."