Balakrishnan Hema, 14

School: Raffles Girls' School (Secondary)

Topic: Two interviews with a donor family

Award: High Distinction, Junior Category, 2025

His Heart Still Beats 

The first time I stepped into the Tan family’s home, it was the kind of quiet that made your ears ring - a silence too heavy for words. A framed photo on the mantelpiece caught the light. Joel, 22, with sunlit eyes and wind-swept hair, laughing as he carried his little sister Sarah on his back. You could almost hear his chortle through the glass. 

Three days earlier, he had been declared brain-dead after a motorbike accident. His helmet cracked. His heartbeat steady. His mind, gone. 

His mother, Clara, looked like she hadn’t slept in days. “He was the kind of boy who’d stop to help a stranger with groceries. The kind who gave everything, even when he didn’t have much. Once, he told me, out of nowhere, ‘Mum, if anything ever happens to me, I want to donate my organs.’ I told him not to be ridiculous. But he wasn’t joking. He just smiled with that spark in his eyes. The same spark that had rendered his eyes hollow and lifeless when it diminished that day.” 

Sarah sat in the corner hugging Joel’s old hoodie. She hadn’t spoken much since the accident. 

They had only minutes to decide. The doctors explained that time was critical. Joel’s organs were still healthy. They could save lives. 

“I wanted to scream,” his father, Daniel whispered. “How do you let go of your son like that? How do you say goodbye and sign a form in the same breath?” 

But they did. Because Joel would have wanted them to. 

His heart, liver, kidneys, pancreas, and corneas were donated. Six lives were saved.

Clara told me about the morning after. How she woke up and for a split second forgot - until she saw his bedroom door slightly ajar, the quietness louder than a voice could ever be. 

“I sank to the floor and screamed into his pillow. That was the only piece of him I had left that hadn’t been taken to a hospital somewhere.” 

When I returned to speak with them six months later, the grief hadn’t gone away. It had simply morphed. Clara met me at the door holding a letter - handwritten, folded carefully. 

“It’s from Benjamin. He has Joel’s heart.” She took a shaky breath. “He says he listens to it every night - through a monitor. Says it helps him sleep.” 

Her voice cracked. “I used to listen to that heartbeat when Joel lay on my chest as a baby. Now someone else does. Somewhere, my little boy's heart is still beating - but my arms are empty.” 

And then she whispered, “I just want my boy back.” 

Daniel spoke more this time. “At first I felt like Joel had been taken from us twice - once by the accident, and again by the doctors, piece by piece. But then the letters came. From a mother whose child can now see. From a woman who said she can dance again because of a new liver. Joel didn’t die for nothing.” 

He paused. “I used to listen for Joel’s footsteps in the morning. I still do, sometimes. But now I tell myself… maybe someone else hears them, somewhere else.” 

In both interviews, I felt the weight of what the Tans had endured - and what they had given. It is easy to reduce organ donation to numbers: six lives saved, countless more touched. But the truth is far more personal. 

It’s about a father who still drives by the hospital every day, imagining his son’s heartbeat

echoing somewhere nearby. It’s about a mother who writes to the recipients as if she’s writing to fragments of her son. It’s about knowing that even in the darkest, cruelest moment, their choice meant someone else’s story did not have to end. 

Organ donation is not about heroism. It is about humanity - fragile, aching, resilient. 

Joel will never return to his family’s dinner table, never graduate, never marry. But he did give a little girl her sight. He did let a father walk his daughter down the aisle. He did give six people and their families a second chance. 

The Tans remind us: behind every donation is a grieving family, a beloved face, a choice that wasn’t easy - but was deeply, profoundly human. 

Please, talk to your loved ones. Say the words out loud: “If something happens to me, I want to be a donor.” One conversation can become someone’s second heartbeat. 

Let Joel’s story echo louder. Let it not end in silence.

Disclaimer: Please note that the views and opinions expressed in the essays for the Live On Festival 2025 are those of the participants and are not endorsed by the National Organ Transplant Unit (Ministry of Health).

To learn more about organ donation and organ transplantation in Singapore, please visit www.liveon.gov.sg