I'm walking to remember those lost to suicide and help people in crisis

When I was in Year 5, I had a teacher named Chen Fei Yang.

He was everyone’s favourite — young, lively, funny and kind. He had a way of understanding us and making us laugh. To us, he often felt more like a friend than simply a teacher.

One afternoon after school, I saw him riding past me on his motorbike. Normally I would have called out and said hello, but that day he turned his face away.

I still remember his eyes.

They were red, as though he had been crying. As a child, I remember thinking it was strange to see a grown man cry. I knew something about him seemed different that day, but I was too young to understand what I was seeing.

The next day, we learned that he had died by suicide.

We later heard that he had been under enormous pressure surrounding his upcoming marriage and the expectations placed upon him. His death devastated all of us. We were only children, but losing someone we loved and admired in that way stayed with many of us for years.

As I grew older and experienced more of life myself, I often thought back to that afternoon.

I wondered what might have happened if one of us had stopped and spoken to him. Maybe someone would have made one of the silly jokes he always made for us. Maybe we could have reminded him, even for a moment, that he mattered to so many people.

I know now that no single conversation can be assumed to change what someone is going through, and none of us could have known the depth of his pain.

But I have never forgotten his eyes.

More than anything, I wish he could have seen himself through the eyes of the children who adored him. I wish he had known how many lives he had already touched, and how deeply his absence would be felt.

More than twenty years later, I still remember you, Teacher Chen.

And whenever I think of you, I am reminded that sometimes the person who makes everyone else laugh may be carrying a pain nobody can see.

So ask. Stay a little longer. Listen. Be kind.

You may never know how much that small moment of human connection means to someone.