My heart bleeds every day

Asha, 34, agonises everyday as she relives the pain knowing she would never get the opportunity to share another Christmas with her brother Keston ‘Pookie’ Jeffery, 23, and mother, Theresa Liverpool, 52.

On October 3, Jeffery, a private for hire (PH) driver was beaten and stabbed to death while driving his car.

Two weeks later, Asha’s mother collapsed at the family home and subsequently died at the Point Fortin Area Hospital.

An autopsy revealed her death was due to a “saddle pulmonary embolism” — separation of the main artery of the lung.

Despite the emotional pain she suffers, Asha’s only hope is to continue to be a mother-figure to her younger brothers, Theon, 12, and Kellon Liverpool, 17, and also her own children, daughter Kiara, four, and nineyear- old Keeshawn.

Asha along with her husband Keegan Samlalsingh, 34, now share the responsibility of providing and caring for her siblings at the family’s home in Egypt Village, Point Fortin.

“People always tell me to be strong, and I really do appreciate their words of comfort, but my heart bleeds everyday knowing that I will never be able to get justice for my brother’s murder which has caused my mother to grieve to death.

I am so angry and hurt,” Asha told Sunday Newsday during an interview at the family home.

In the living room, two large portraits of her brother and mother hang on the wall.

“I look at these photographs everyday and I cry, but I try to be strong and wipe my tears because I don’t want my brothers to see me crying.

I want them to know that I am strong and I would always be a shoulder they can lean on always,” said Asha.

Through her tears she smiled as she recalled fond memories with her mother and brother on Christmas holidays.

“My mother was Christmas I would say.

She loved Christmas so much and everything that came with the holidays.

She was always excited about the last minute rush such as the baking, cooking and decorating,” Asha recalled.

One of the most cherished traditions for the family was assembling and decorating the Christmas tree.

She said it was difficult to perform the tradition without the presence of her brother and mother.

But the young mother found the strength to purchase a new Christmas tree which her mother had planned to buy this season.

“My brothers and my children helped decorate and assemble the tree. I don’t know how I would continue to cope in the years to come, and experience many more Christmas days without her, but I don’t want to deny my brothers and children the experience of Christmas,” she related. Investigators had said Asha’s brother was plying his Nissan B14 car for hire, when a group of men hijacked and ordered him to drive to Cap-de-Ville, near Point Fortin where they stabbed him repeatedly to the chest.

Police found the car crashed on the roadside in a forested area. His money and a gold chain were missing.

“There are nights I would wake up and look at my brothers asleep and cry because I know it is hard for them. I always ask them how they are feeling because I want them to communicate their feelings with me because I know they are hurting and I have to be strong for them,” Asha adding her strength to continue comes from prayer.

“Prayer is the only thing that is keeping me alive and going. I cannot explain how hurt I am. I am really really hurt,” she said.

Also standing strong with her is her husband.

“I thank God for my husband who is always at my side.

He takes care of my brothers like his own children, because my brothers are now like my children,” she said. But she admitted the family now struggles to make ends meet because of the additional expenses.

“I am not working and my husband is the sole breadwinner, it is hard on him and it would be nice to get some extra assistance from the Government, but we are not getting that at the moment and we are doing the best we could do with what we have,” she said.

Police are yet to arrest and charge anyone for her brother’s murder and investigations are continuing.