Saw Lip Chye (1954-2025)

On this Christmas Day, I find myself writing not about celebrating a festivity but about a piece of sober news. Earlier this month, another friend from my Westlands Primary School days passed away. Lawrence Saw Lip Chye was someone I had known from Standard One. His was one of those faces from the very beginning.

We lost contact after our schooldays diverged. I went on to Penang Free School, while he continued at Westlands Secondary. And for many years he slipped out of view, as so many do. Our paths crossed again only in 2018, when I set up a chat group to reconnect with our old primary school friends. By then, almost all of us had retired. Almost, but not Lip Chye.

He was still working, not in Penang but in Ipoh, where he held a senior role in a quarry firm. From what I understand, he was effectively in charge of human resource or operations, armed with an impressive list of safety certifications. He had become indispensable, the kind of man a boss leans on and doesn’t easily let go. It was only early this year that he began seriously thinking about retirement, a wish finally realised in March.

Retirement suited him. He spent time in his garden, went walking around the DO hill behind his home in Bukit Mertajam, and kept himself active on his treadmill. Then, on the eighth of December, the word came. He had been walking on that treadmill, stopped, sat down and died. Sudden. Shocking. No warning.

Lip Chye was the third of my Westlands Primary School friends to pass away this year. Oon Hup, Seng Oo and now, Lip Chye. All 71 years old, all people I had known since 1961 or 1962. When the friendship begins that early, the losses feel less like news and more like a quiet narrowing of the world.

On a day meant for cheer, this is the thought that stays with me.