Day 2 - Collection at the Morgue

Had to wake up early this morning about 7am so that we can reach the morgue (SGH Blk 9 along Outram) at 8am to claim my dad's body. Cheryl also woke up and we told her we were going to "collect Kong Kong".

TT, being in the police force before, warned me that there might be "kaypoh" reporters and photographers to hound the bereaved families at the morgue. However when we reached there, we found that it was longer like that. There were signs saying that the press were not allowed at the premises. There were several other families there too. I met the Investigating Officer assigned to me and passed him my dad's medication. We had to wait a while and then the family members had to identify the respective bodies. One by one, we were taken to a room and I was able to see my dad's body through a glass window, a bit like doing a criminal line-up identification. This took less than 10 seconds. TT said it was much better now because previously he remembered that family members had to enter the freezing morgue, walk pass some other bodies, then the cloth will be uncovered for the family to confirm the identity of the body.

Then we had to wait again while all the Officers gathered to review their cases with the Coroner. Fortunately my dad's body did not require an autopsy and so we would be able to take the body back in about an hour's time. We decided to drop by my dad's office to clear some stuff there. The office management wanted to perform some cleansing rituals and needed us to help them remove some of my dad's religious items. We would clear his other stuff another day. Then we returned to the morgue to get my dad's death cert and collect the body. The guy from Singapore Casket was there to take the body for embalming. Thereafter we went to my dad's place to get his passport photo which would be needed for his obituary and also to be enlarged for the casket.

We went to my sis' place for lunch. And since we couldn't do anything else till 7pm when the palour would be ready, I attended the music class with Cheryl. Mel and TT went to SPH to get the obituary published in the next day's Sunday Times. Then we all had a quick dinner at our place before everyone,including the kids, headed to the palour at Lavendar Street. The kids were quite excited by the new environment and even helped to arrange the sweets, peanuts, melon seeds and red threads on the paper plate for each table. I suspected they just wanted to eat the sweets.

We had quite a number of visitors, mainly relatives whom we had informed and dad's colleagues. By 10pm the kids were quite bored and so TT brought them back to our home. Lauren and Oli stayed over at our place. I'm sure the kids had fun with the sleepover. After they had gone to bed, TT returned to the wake. It was almost midnight when we closed the palour room and headed home. I was really tired, just took a bath and went to bed.