JOY AFTER SORROW

On Sunday last, Ramdeen’s great aunt Lilawatee Ramsaran, 69, was found murdered in her home in the Bronx, New York. She was stabbed to death in what was described by police as a domestic dispute.

Ramsaran, whenever she visited Trinidad and her hometown in Siparia, stayed at Ramdeen’s home.

Ramdeen who was a student of Shiva Boys’ Hindu College in Penal was the only student from that school to earn a National Scholarship (Additiona - Natural Sciences) for excellent grades in the Caribbean Advanced Proficiency Examination (CAPE). She received news of her aunt’s gruesome death late last Sunday night and since then, the family had been holding nightly vigils until Ramsaran’s final rites and cremation on Thursday last, in New York.

Ramdeen was a Form Six student of Shiva Boys, a school which allows female students only, to pursue CAPE examinations. She obtained eight grade 1 passes in Biology, Chemistry, Pure Mathematics and Communications Studies.

Those grades facilitated her in being among the 389 of this country’s brightest CAPE students to earn a scholarship in Natural Sciences.

Yesterday, Ramdeen who said she is still grieving over her aunt’s murder, managed a smile during the interview, telling Newsday that aunt Ramsaran had promised that when next she would have returned to Trinidad for holidays, “she would have given me something.” “Well the dream and expectation of seeing her walking through that door to hug me and the rest of the family...that is dead forever,” Ramdeen said. Recalling that her aunt had made that promise after she earned eight grade ones in her CSEC examinations while she was a student at Parvati Hindu school two years ago, Ramdeen Mickayla said that apart from proving to her mother, father, twin brothers and a younger sister, that she was good enough to win a scholarship, “I was bent on convincing aunty Lila that I could make the entire family and our village proud. I hope wherever she is, my aunt is proud of me.” She said that her aunt’s death and the manner of her passing (stabbed multiple times) had plunged the entire family into mourning. On Thursday last, she added, tears flowed when the family witnessed the funeral service via Skype from their home Siparia. “I won’t lie to you, I wept bitterly,” Ramdeen said, adding that she went to bed after the funeral as she felt no zeal to do anything that day.

At half past five, Thursday afternoon, another aunt Susan Ramdeen, who lives in the upper floor of the family home came running to the ground floor to break some good news. Aunt Susan said that she was browsing the Ministry of Education’s website and saw Mickayla’s name among the 389 scholarship winners.

Ramdeen’s mother Jennifer, told Newsday that they ran into her daughter’s room and tried to wake her, but her daughter - still emotional from watching the funeral via Skype a few hours earlier, was reluctant to get off the bed. “It was only when her aunt told her that she had won a scholarship, that Mickayla woke up and then, I saw a big smile on her face,” Jennifer said.

Asked how she felt that someone grieving over the passing of a relative in such tragic circumstances, would wake up from deep sleep to be greeted by such a silver lining, Mickayla said, “Yes, I felt that the saying, that after grief there is joy, is really true.” Mickayla has already begun classes at the Eric Williams Medical Sciences Complex where she is pursuing a course of study in medicine.

Her career goal is to become an oncologist. She said that several members in her family died from cancer including an uncle a mere two years ago and this is what is driving her towards the field of oncology (the identifying and treatment of cancer).