A 70-year-old mother has been delivering meals to her widowed daughter for the past 3 years, taking an hour-long bus ride from her Toa Payoh home to her daughter’s flat in Bedok Reservoir nearly every day.
According to the Chinese daily, the woman’s 40-year-old daughter has not left her flat since her husband passed away. Since then, her elderly mother has taken to visiting her daughter to persuade her to eat.
Sometimes, the elderly woman would have to knock and plead for hours before her daughter would open the door. When a reporter visited the flat on Feb 22, he saw the woman arriving with a plastic bag around 4pm and knocking on the door. The door remained shut as the woman kept calling out for her daughter until her voice turned hoarse.
The reporter saw the woman leaving the gate of the apartment, tired and sad, to rest at a bench in the void deck. She returns around 6pm to plead for her daughter to open the door, almost begging for her daughter to do so.
15 minutes later, the door opens and a frail, skinny woman can be seen by the doorway. The 70-year-old happily hands the food to her daughter. She does not enter the home but waits outside chatting, content even though her child barely responds.
30 minutes go by and the woman leaves happily, with the empty takeaway box. When the reporter catches up with her outside the flat, she sighs: “She hasn’t been leaving the house by herself ever since her husband’s death. If I don’t come over, how would she get food for herself?”