... A hard, expensive road ahead for a distraught mother

ADDED TO the grief of losing her daughter, the expense of sending five children to school is already taking its toll on Marjorie ‘Madge’ Bell. In fact, some days, she can’t send them to school as there are just no the funds.

Her 36-year-old daughter, Marcia Ford, was brutally taken from her, leaving behind four children, who have now become Bell’s responsibility, along with her own teen daughter.

“It hard, enuh. It rough, enuh. It tough, enuh. Sometimes mi can’t even find it. Mi nuh have no form a help, just mi other three children, and they are not working, but they still try to give me something,” Bell shared in despair.

Her grandchildren’s future is looking bleak, with her being unemployed, but she is trying her best to hold the family together.

“Mi caan allow them to be separated. Dem already lose dem madda. I’m doing everything in mi power to keep them together, but I need help,” she pleaded.

Bell said that she just needs some clothes, food supplies, and help to keep them in school and she will do the rest.

TIME TO HEAL

Emotionally, she said that they need time to heal as the youngest, age eight, hugs her ever so often and tells her that her mother is dead.

The 12-year-old often wonders aloud about the reality of the death, while the 13-year old is yearning to live somewhere else.

“She says to me, ‘Mi want somewhere different fi live, yuh know ’cause when mi haffi go a school a mawning time, a in front a di bar mi haffi stand up, and when mi go out dere, it just bring back memories, and mi a sey, ‘I wonder if dem a guh kill me like how dem shoot Mommy’,” Bell related, adding that her granddaughter gets emotional, too, when she hears passengers discussing her mother’s death in the taxi she takes to school.

The heartbroken mother will have to wait a while for closure as an autopsy is yet to be scheduled for her daughter, who was gunned down at a bar on December 7 last year in Savanna Cross, Clarendon. But it is also a blessing in disguise as she still has not identified the resources to take care of the funeral expenses.

Until then, Bell continues the arduous task of picking up the pieces, keeping the family together, and trying to get the sight of her daughter’s blank, lifeless stare erased from her memory – something that keeps her from eating.

“Every time mi tek up mi food to eat, after two bites, I haffi put it down. The memories just too much,” she said.

“It’s only God knows. Just Him know how mi a go carry on.”

Mi caan allow them to be separated. Dem already lose dem madda. I’m doing everythi ng in mi power to keep them together, but I need help.”