A mother’s anguish
It’s not an easy road for Marjorie Bell
ON DECEMBER 7, 2016, Marjorie ‘Madge’ Bell’s life was forever changed. While happily painting her room and looking forward to the upcoming Yuletide season, she received a phone call that shattered her world, and up to now, she has been walking around in a dazed stupor. Her oldest of four children – daughter, 36-year-old Marcia Ford – was brutally gunned down at a bar, along with a taxi Marjorie ‘Madge’ Bell
operator, in Savanna Cross, Clarendon.
In between tears and sometimes blank stares, Bell related the ordeal of that fateful day on which she fainted multiple times. Refusing to allow the funeral parlour driver to take her daughter away, Bell embraced the bloodied body. She just could not believe that she was really gone forever.
NOT COPING WELL
A resident of Inverness, Sandy Bay, in the parish, Bell now travels between homes in order to take care of her four grandchildren left without a mother. They are still living at their late mother’s residence.
The distraught mother admits that she is not coping too well, overwhelmed by the new situation thrust upon her. She said the pressure is just too much.
“A feel like walk road, walk, walk, walk before mi come a mi yard, you understand,” she told The Gleaner, a faraway look in her eyes.
“And di biggest part a it now is that mi know sey she dead now ’cause mi nah see har. Mi nah call har phone. Mi an har used to correspond every two days. Mi nah hear nutten from har. Mi nah si har or nutten, so mi realise sey she dead fi true,” Bell shared, breaking down altogether as another fit of tears overcame her.
After regaining a semblance of composure, she said that most days, she feels like a zombie just going through the motions, doing what she has to do for her youngest child – a 14-year-old student of The Queen’s School – and trying to tackle the huge responsibility of taking care of her grandchildren – ages 18, 13, 12, and eight.