RISING STRONG

AMANDA TOH-STECKLER gets real about life after loss and how she's keeping her late husband's legacy alive while building her own.

It's been a little over two years since Amanda Toh-Steckler lost her husband, Vincent, and she feels more comfortable talking about him now. "We would have been together for 20 years today - if he were still alive. He was a good man. He gave back to society, to the community. I want to tell the world what he did and carry on his legacy," says the 51-year-old, upbeat but shaded with grief.

Theirs was a love story that almost didn't happen. Amanda and Vince, who was a vice-president of software company Symantec at the time, were introduced to each other by a mutual friend. “I had just come out of a relationship, so I told him I wasn't ready," says Amanda. "He said, 'I will wait, I will be patient.' And every Monday he would send a big bouquet of flowers to my office at Ngee Ann City, where I was working at a property development company. He was romantic and persistent. It took a while for us to be an item, but we had been talking every day since our first date."

There's a saying that when you marry someone, you marry the family. Serendipitously, the two households - with teenage children no less - got on like a house on fire. "Vince had two daughters and I have a son from our previous marriages. Together, we have a girl and a boy. We're a blended family and everyone gets along so well," says Amanda. Holidays with the entire brood are an annual tradition.

Raised in a sprawling extended household of over 50 people, Amanda is no stranger to having a large family. Her father, a flower plantation owner, was one of 11 children, and three generations lived side-by-side in the same estate in Sembawang. They worked the farms and ate together, like a village community.