Disabled mom lives sad and lonely life — longing for happiness

CARMEN Seelochan, 51, of Robertson Trace, Pluck Road, San Francique, is ashamed of her feet. Born with a bone deformation, her feet are twisted inwards which makes walking difficult. Life has been an uphill struggle for this disabled mother. With no one to care for her and shy about her deformed feet, Seelochan built a one-room shack in the most remote part of Pluck Road.

There’s no electricity, pipe-borne water, telephone and transportation from the trace where she resides. Seelochan lives alone in the one-room shack. She hardly ventures outside, except to use the bathroom — a makeshift outhouse built of rusted galvanise. When Newsday visited Seelochan yesterday, the woman was making up her bed. Her bedroom serves as both her kitchen and living room. She said her only means of livelihood is a few hundred dollars each month which she receives as a Social Welfare grant.

The only evidence of food in her shack yesterday, were packets of Crix biscuits and small containers with brown sugar and split peas. Seelochan said she passes the day sitting on her bed, because her shack has no furniture. From a small wooden window, she spent days gazing outside in the bushes which surround her shack. Seelochan said no one comes to the shack to look for her. Growing up from a poverty-stricken background, Seelochan said she always had a hard life.

She said she remembered the days when she was in love. It was perhaps the only period in her life, she said, she felt like somebody. “Despite my disability to walk, I felt like I had something to live for, something to look forward to — a future filled with love and hope,” Seelochan said. The communion brought her a boy and a girl. But according to Seelochan, those bright days were shattered early in life.

She has not seen her daughter for the past two years. She knows very little about her son’s whereabouts, she said. “I know I didn’t have the strength to grow them up,” cried Seelochan. “I live a very sad life now, filled with worries, but I pray a lot and hope that one day my family will be reunited, and we will be one big, happy family again,” Seelochan said.