Had they told me
In nineteen eighty-three
That eighteen years later
The cradle which held her
Would mutate into a casket
I would not bother...
(Metamorphosis from My Bleeding Heart by Sister Lydia)
Days before she was supposed to write her A-Level examinations, Candice Robin succumbed to a mysterious illness no doctor could diagnose. Robin was a brilliant 18-year-old who had attained nine CXC passes, with eight distinctions. In 2001, her mom, Sister Lydia, said she took her daughter to the hospital because she looked ill.
And though her daughter felt there was nothing to worry about, Robin was soon unable to move her arms and eventually could not walk. The doctors ran tests on her and found nothing clinically wrong.
Her death left her mother devastated and today, eight years later, she has not been able to overcome the grief of losing one of her children. "The grief was unimaginable," Lydia told the Sunday Guardian. So immense was her grief that Lydia lost her appetite, eventually going from 200 pounds, in what she called her "heyday," to 98 pounds. "Candice came on earth and left so young and did so many good things that I want to ensure she's not forgotten. "To put a child in the earth is the worst thing in the world."
Anger, hurt...Lydia was a writer even before her daughter's death. The poet has dedicated her third book of poems, My Bleedin' Heart, to her daughter. Metamorphosis is one of the poems in the book. The poems are about Lydia and the way she feels about her life's experiences. They tell of anger and of hurt. "I wrote from my heart. Some of the poems really tugged at me," Lydia said. A broken marriage was another heart-wrenching experience that inspired much of the poetry.
"The destruction of my marriage put rage into me and caused me to write more," she said. She said the death of a marriage is worse spiritually. When Robin died she also started a book of poems titled: Suffering Unlimited: The Death Files–a book which she was discouraged from publishing. "Someone told me some things are better left to myself," she said. A few of the poems from that book are in My Bleedin' Heart.
It was last November when she began reading for Clyde Huggins, a blind poet, that Lydia began to come out of her grief. He became her manager and encouraged her to publish the book of poems. "He sort of brought me out of the death grip," she said. Lydia will also be publishing three novels. The second of the three which she wrote– One Hell of a Dilemma: What the Devil is Going on in Church, is scheduled to be out by Christmas.
