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No relatives at Joshua’s funeral
Dear Editor,
About a week ago I attended the funeral and burial for Joshua Moonsammy. He was the disabled six year old who was abandoned by his mother at the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation ( GPHC). And he was rejected and forgotten by the rest of the society and government institutions and left to die for five years at the ( GPHC). In my previous letter, I posited that “Disabled children are not wanted in Guyana.”
Editor, at his funeral and burial, can you believe that not a single member of his family showed up, no mother, father, brother or sister. The people who were there were the hospital staff, Child Protection Services and a few people who never met him before. Some of the strangers who were there were people who having read my previous letter and were touched by his story felt compassion for him, and came out to say goodbye to him.
Editor, I’ve been to many funerals and burials, but I’ve never been to any funeral for a child where no family members showed up. He was abandoned at birth at the hospital and now at his death.
Which makes me curious to know what was going through his mind from the time he was abandoned to until his death five years later. To help me to understand the mind of Joshua during those five tumultuous years he spent at GPHC, I have turned to a book called, “Ghost Boy,” to help me to understand Joshua’s medical condition better. The book is a story about young man who fell into a coma.
Editor, Joshua spent the remaining five years of his life lying motionless on the floor or slumped in a troller with a strap holding him upright. His body, was like a prison that he couldn’t escape, when he will his arm to move, it stays still.
And just days before he died, he was given his first wheelchair but never got to sit in it because it came too late.
Joshua’s life and death had a profound impact on me. Learning about him being abandoned and subsequently dying challenges me to be able to do more for the orphans in our community.
Anthony Pantlitz
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