While most know Sheila Sim as Singapore’s top model-turned actress, the Emerald Hill star got deeply personal on CNA’sThe Assembly, where she revealed her biggest regret in life.

Sheila opened up about her late brother, Cedear, passing away from leukaemia at 14 on The Assembly's panel of neurodivergent interviewers asking unfiltered questions. Sheila was only nine when he died. 

Now 41, Sheila is still deeply emotional talking about it, revealing she was only seven when they found out about Cedear’s diagnosis. 

“Quite honestly, I was too young to understand what cancer was. I was still very “about me” and egocentric. I just didn’t understand why I was always going to the hospital to visit him,” she said.

When Cedear’s condition worsened, Sheila became his bone marrow donor as she was the only match in the family, and she said she didn’t think so much about it.

“I went ahead [with it] thinking I would save him,” Sheila said.

However, the reality of losing her brother only hit her years later in her 20s.

“I realised that my life would be completely different if I had my brother around,” she said.

The experience also left Sheila angry and resentful for a long time.

“I really hated the doctor for a very long time, which is also why even until today, I do not really subscribe to Western medication,” said Sheila, who added that she prefers Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM).

When asked why she wasn’t at the hospital when Cedear passed, Sheila teared up and needed a moment to compose herself.

“I will always have regrets about that,” she said, her voice trembling. 

However, when the doctor informed the family that his condition was critical, their parents decided it was time to prepare an outfit for the wake. 

“He loved LA Gear [shoes]. But we didn’t have the money to buy [them] when he was alive. So, my father decided that we were going to get him LA Gear [shoes for the wake outfit],” she recalled.

“I immediately volunteered [to buy them] because I just wanted to be out of the hospital. And so I went. And when I came back, he wasn’t there anymore. This will always be my biggest regret in life.”

Sheila ended her sharing by saying, “I’ll never know what he would’ve wanted to tell me, and I also didn’t get to say my goodbye.”

What would she have said if she could turn back time and have another chance to say goodbye to Cedear?

She tearfully replied: “That I’m sorry for all the fights that we had.

“That he’s very brave to have put up a very, very, very courageous fight against leukaemia. And that I love him very much, and I’m sorry I never got the chance to show it or to say it when he was healthy”.

Photos: CNA

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