Un­will­ing to be­lieve that the love of his life was gone, Ram­di­al Ba­boolal, 70, clutched his wife's cas­ket and sobbed un­con­trol­lably dur­ing her fu­ner­al at Debe on Fri­day.

No­body was able to see Ba­boolal's face for the fi­nal time. Her head was de­cap­i­tat­ed dur­ing the hor­rif­ic crash in­volv­ing a truck and a PTSC bus on Tues­day.

Ba­boolal, 66, and Judy Clarke, 61, of Diego Mar­tin who were pas­sen­gers in the bus, died while 48 oth­ers were in­jured fol­low­ing the crash.

Re­ports said the dri­ver of a dump truck was head­ing south when the right front tyre blew out, caus­ing him to crash in­to a wa­ter de­liv­ery truck which crossed the me­di­an and slammed in­to the bus which was head­ing north near the Munroe Road fly­over. The dri­ver of the bus es­caped suf­fered sev­er­al cuts from bro­ken glass but man­aged to veer the bus to safe­ly to the side of the road.

Hun­dreds of mourn­ers packed the fam­i­ly's home at Con­go Vil­lage, Ra­mai Trace, fill­ing every avail­able space. The wail­ing of her fam­i­ly start­ed as soon as the hearse came in­to the street, blar­ing Hin­du bha­jans.

Ba­boolal, who was mar­ried to Tara for 49 years, held on to the cas­ket and sobbed. He gazed at her pho­to­graph which stood at the top of the sealed cof­fin. Grand­daugh­ter Ri­an­na Ba­boolal hugged her grand­fa­ther and com­fort­ed him while Ba­boolal's broth­ers and sis­ters wiped away tears.

Pun­dit Satyam Ke­so Ma­haraj said death was one of the mys­ter­ies of life. How­ev­er, he said the tragedy that be­fell the fam­i­ly and sev­er­al oth­ers fol­low­ing the bus crash was shock­ing.

"When I heard about this un­fore­seen tragedy I was tak­en aback. These are the things we on­ly see in movies or read on the pa­pers. How could it hap­pen to one of our own," he asked.

"On­ly when the re­al­i­ty of it comes at you at home, on­ly then it be­comes much more be­liev­able," he said.

Ma­haraj called on the mourn­ers to nev­er take life for grant­ed but to love one an­oth­er.

Min­is­ter of Works Ro­han Sinanan was present at the Shore of Peace, in Mos­qui­to Creek where Ba­boolal was cre­mat­ed.

Sinanan said that the Pub­lic Ser­vice Trans­port Cor­po­ra­tion and the Min­istry of Works will of­fer as­sis­tance to all the fam­i­lies af­fect­ed by the crash.

"We are here to show our con­do­lences and sym­pa­thy to this fam­i­ly. It was an ac­ci­dent. PTSC has reached out to fam­i­ly and they were at their home every day since the ac­ci­dent. I reached out to the fam­i­ly last night and I as­sured them that wher­ev­er we can as­sist, we will stand with them."

Sinanan said no­body could ever be pre­pared to deal with death.