SINGAPORE - Administrative executive Tan Sock Ngor's father Tan Thiam Seng, 81, caught Covid-19 and was admitted to hospital on Feb 8, 2022. He recovered from Covid-19 but developed other complications, including of the heart.

Mr Tan, 81, died in hospital on Feb 19. His four children were not able to say goodbye to him in hospital.

After the funeral, my siblings and I gathered for dinner at my brother's three-room flat in the north-eastern part of Singapore, where my father lived. We did this every Friday but his seat, at the head of the dining table, was empty that evening.

In the past, my father would always have dinner with my brother, sister-in-law, their baby girl as well as my younger sister and her family. It was a daily affair. My mother died a few years ago.

My father would always carry the baby. Suddenly, he was gone.

He was wheelchair-bound and had high blood pressure, high cholesterol and high blood sugar. He was going to start on dialysis.

At home, he loved to sit on the sofa to watch TV.

He was fully vaccinated and had avoided Covid-19 till the Omicron wave came. When my brother and sister-in-law tested positive for it, they isolated themselves elsewhere, and we tested our father every day. On the fifth day, which was Feb 8, he had a fever and vomited after testing positive at home. We decided to call an ambulance.

My two sisters were in the flat with him. They told him not to worry but he could not help it. He asked the paramedics in Hokkien if there was something wrong with him. We didn't even pack a bag for him, expecting him to come back.

He did recover from Covid-19 but other problems arose. On Feb 16, we were told that he had developed an irregular heart rhythm.

The pandemic and the resulting restriction on visitors meant that none of us could visit him.

My father had been hospitalised before but it was the first time in his life that he was alone there. We were so worried.

Every day, the doctor would call and tell us that he was fine. But when my sister asked for help to video call our father so we could talk to him, she was told the nurses were very busy.

We did not insist on the call because the doctor would tell us every day that our father was fine, he was okay and he was stable.

However, on Feb 19, someone from the hospital asked us to rush there to see him for the last time. We were shocked.

The hospital said his death was unexpected. The cause of death was stated as "chronic ischaemic heart disease - unspecified".

My siblings and I never made it to our father's death bed. Half an hour after a hospital staff asked us to rush there, we received another call that he had died.

The pain of not being able to say goodbye to him is hard for us to bear. There is no closure.

At the wake, I kept apologising to him. I told him that it's not that we didn't want to visit him, but that we couldn't.

Till now, we still prepare breakfast for him - a piece of kueh, a slice of bread or a serving of "lo mai kai" and his cup of kopi-o.