"Don't forget, on the fifth day, fetch ayah (father) home, surely I’d be okay by then,” Ismail Putih confidently told his children on May 30, before boarding an ambulance at his house in Taman Mahsuri, to go to the Covid-19 quarantine centre in Kulim, Kedah.

As promised, Ismail, 63, did ‘return home’ on the fifth day, but not the way that his loving family would have envisioned. He breathed his last at Kulim Hospital on June 4, while being treated for Covid-19.