‘I have to look forward’: wife of deceased Hong Kong scaffolder grapples with loss
Mother of two says festive occasions such as Lunar New Year are toughest as they serve as painful reminders of her loss
This Lunar New Year will be the first that Lam is spending without her husband and the father of their two young children, after he died in an industrial accident in Hong Kong two months ago.
“I often hear about such stories in the news. But I never thought it would one day happen to me,” said the wife of the 44-year-old scaffolder, who asked to be identified only by her husband’s surname.
Married for 10 years, the couple raised their son and daughter, aged eight and four respectively, together. The husband ran a construction company with business partners, while she is a part-time beautician.
“He would kiss me and hug me before he went to work every day,” Lam, in her early 40s, said. “But I still cannot forget that just after one phone call, my loved one would be gone forever. And that [morning] was the last moment [we had].”
On November 5 last year, he left home in the morning to work on the scaffolding of a factory building in To Kwa Wan and never came back.
The scaffolder reportedly fell from a 11-storey building while he was working with three others, even though they had secured themselves with safety harnesses attached to an angle bracket.
