Weeds might be overrunning sections of May Pen Cemetery in downtown Kingston, but some families are determined not to allow them to choke the resting place of their loved ones.
Yesterday, as Jamaica celebrated Mother’s Day, relatives journeyed to the gravesides of their departed matriarchs to reconnect with them.
Chrisana Bailey was one such person. Early Sunday morning, he made the trek to the cemetery to clean up the graveside of his mother, Felicia Gordon, who died in 1985.
Chrisana was 12 when his mother, a 30-year-old folk singer from Tivoli Gardens, died. Twenty-five years later, he still wishes he could talk to her.
“Mi love mi mother a lot. I remember some things she used to tell me and how she used to mek mi laugh. Mi come here every Mother’s Day and clean up her grave and talk with her,” Chrisana said. He then gleefully adjusted a Mother’s Day musical card on the grave.
Chrisana was not the only one who turned up at the May Pen Cemetery to say, ‘Hello, Mom.’ Not far from Gordon’s grave, a young man led his family in a devotional exercise as he read from the Bible at the graveside of a mom.
“We come here every year. They may be dead, but we will never leave them alone,” the granddaughter of Adina Williams declared.
Williams died in 1999, aged 76, and yesterday members of the family she left behind repainted, in pink and white, her tomb, a testimony to their vow to keep her memory alive.
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