I'm preparing for my next life by doing good, says terminal liver cancer patient

Former risk manager Roger Tan spends his days doing volunteer work and writing daily e-mails to those behind bars.

- Wong Kim Hoh

It's hard to imagine that Mr Roger Tan's days are numbered. His fitted T-shirt hugs a gym-honed body, sleeves stretched over solid biceps, with no trace of middle-age spread. He is sharp, lively and quick on his feet.

But in December 2024, doctors told the 48-year-old, with the clinical certainty that only doctors possess, that he had just 12 months left. Liver cancer, they said. Terminal.

Yet, if you expect to find a man defeated, you would be mistaken. A former risk manager with a global bank, his days are spent not in bitterness or regret, but in volunteer work and in writing.

Every day, he crafts an e-mail — sometimes about mindfulness, sometimes about self-compassion, sometimes just about the small joys of life — and sends it to a group of inmates he befriended during his years as a volunteer counsellor in prison.

Those daily messages were collected in his book, Dear Inmates: Daily Emails To Prisoners, which was launched in May. The book was published with the help of Ambulance Wish Singapore (AWS), the charity that grants last wishes to the terminally ill.

Chirpily, he says he is not scared of dying.

"I look back at what I've done in the past few years, and I'm very, very happy. It's been meaningful, helping people. So, no regrets. Die, die lor."

Mr Tan's story began in a kampung in Lim Chu Kang, where his paternal grandfather owned a sprawling durian plantation.

As the youngest of three siblings, he grew up with space to roam, animals to keep and a family that valued hard work and humility. His father was an engineer and his mother a factory worker who now works in a coffee shop, not for the money but for the sense of purpose it gives her.

Outspoken and playful, he displayed his academic prowess at Ama Keng Primary and Bukit Panjang Government High schools, where he consistently ranked among the top in his cohort.