The great equaliser

Mar 29, 2009 Features / Columnists, My Column

News travels fast, so fast that sometimes the person responsible for its dissemination hardly gets a chance to open his mouth before the news is gone. Friday night was like any other night except that it rained a bit in the city. There was a release from the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation that Mrs Janet Jagan was admitted at about five that afternoon after she complained of feeling unwell.

I spotted the release and called a reporter to do the story. This was not the first time that Mrs Jagan had to go to hospital and given her age, I told myself that it would not be the last. However, the enterprising reporter with a lot of contacts found out that Mrs Jagan was in the Intensive Care Unit of the hospital. Even that I brushed aside because with her being a former president of this country, she would not be in any ordinary ward.

With prominent people, if they get a scratch they end up in some special section of the hospital although in this case I wondered about the fact that she was not in the High Dependency Unit.
The news came shortly after midnight that she had died. By sunrise, a lot of people were calling me to verify what they had heard. By the end of the day there was going to be a lot of spin. In this country the dead have power; they come for people.
I remember going to funerals and seeing adults passing children over the coffin with the body resting calmly inside. This is supposed to prevent the dead person from coming for the young children in the household. This practice is not widespread in the city but it is rampant in rural Guyana where traditions do not die easily.

And so it was that a person mentioned to me that Mrs Jagan had gone to Lorri Alexander’s funeral that very Friday. The conversation did not end there. “Lorri carry she wid he.”
Then someone remembered that her husband, Dr Cheddi Jagan had died in March, ten years to the day. “She husband get she at last.”
No one stopped to think that except for the person committing suicide, no one chooses the time and hour of his or her death. The fact that Mrs Jagan died in March certainly had nothing to do with her husband. But the fact of the timing certainly made for good conversation.
I, like many others, knew her. I cannot remember the first meeting but it was a long time ago. Even before I met her I had heard of her at school doing a subject called civics. Mrs Jagan died leaving behind her a civic component of her party.

I went to school with her only son who was as wicked as they come and whom I rarely see these days, but if I have a dental problem I will unhesitatingly go to him. I know that despite her age, he feared her in the same way I fear the gallows. I do not know why and I hope that one day he will tell me about this phobia.
He must be in grief because it is in our nature to mourn the loss of things close to us, and regardless of the relationship we shared I will offer Joey my sympathy.

A few hours after that phone call informing me of Mrs Jagan’s demise I got another. A close friend had also died. People may say that Mrs. Jagan took him with her.
Raymond Lynch was a pressman who helped see Kaieteur News on the streets. He worked hard and he loved life. He was also protective of his friends. I knew him from my days at the Chronicle and I played cricket with him. He had a defective leg but that did not stop him from doing so many things, including playing cricket as a bowler. We played together.
I got a call from a colleague that Raymond’s body was pulled from a car that had plunged into a canal. The shock was real because some people, especially those younger than you should not go before you, especially if they are not ill.

Raymond’s death was linked to Mrs Jagan. He knew that she had died and that the Guyana Chronicle was not going to wait until the next day to report this piece of news. Raymond had finished printing the original publication when he was informed that he had to go back and print the new edition.
Whether he had alcohol in his system or whether he fell asleep at the wheel I cannot say. The fact is that he drove off the road and perished in the vehicle he owned, his first car.

Peeping Tom spoke about avoiding me because people who come into contact with me die. However, I am not accepting responsibility for these two deaths. I will miss both because they had become fixtures in my life. There will be numerous tributes for Mrs Jagan and hardly any for Raymond, but that is the nature of the society. What is certain that while they may have lived in different stations they have both been embraced by the great equaliser.

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