Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

Beloved his­to­ri­an and au­thor An­ge­lo Bisses­sars­ingh has slipped in­to un­con­scious­ness and doc­tors say he will lose­his bat­tle with pan­cre­at­ic can­cer soon.

The na­tion­al hero who pub­lished four books de­spite his ill­ness, took a turn for the worse over the week­end. His fa­ther Rudolph Bisses­sars­ingh said, "Things are not look­ing good at this time. His con­di­tion change­dovernight. He is on mor­phine and­he has slipped in­to un­con­scious­ness. The hos­pi­tal said there is no hope. We are to­tal­ly de­pressed over this."

As a de­vout Bud­dhist, Rudolph said it was his hope that An­ge­lo will be rein­car­nat­ed.

"His con­scious­ness will live on. He will nev­er die," Rudolph said.

He al­so said thatAn­ge­lo's clos­est friends from CNC3 as well as his men­tors and con­fi­dants­Francesca Hawkins,Judy Ray­mond, Pro­fes­sor Brins­ley Sama­roo, Michelle Ce­les­tine and oth­ers, vis­it­ed him at their Siparia home.

Say­ing the out­pour­ing of love shown to his son was over­whelm­ing, Rudolph added, "We are re­al­ly grate­ful to all of you who have been a friend to An­ge­lo and who helped him dur­ing his or­deal."

Over the past few weeks, An­ge­lo had­been con­fined to his bed as the can­cer se­vere­ly im­pact­ed on his mo­bil­i­ty.

Speak­ing to this re­porter last­Thurs­day,An­ge­lo said he was hop­ing to live un­til themid­dle of Feb­ru­ary to see his lat­est book Folk­lore and Mythol­o­gy in T&T pub­lished.

He al­so re­vealed that he was in the process of com­pil­ing and pub­lish­ing an­oth­er book of short sto­ries doc­u­ment­ing life in the south­ern part of the is­land.

"I have the da­ta and I have al­ready found the im­agery for that so we can start pub­lish­ing it in Feb­ru­ary but liv­ing with the lim­i­ta­tions as I do, it is very dif­fi­cult but I am hop­ing to see it pub­lished," An­ge­lo said at the time.

He de­scribed his ill­ness as "re­stric­tive" but de­spite his im­mo­bil­i­ty, An­ge­lo con­tin­ued to dic­tate his week­ly Guardian col­umn as well as com­pile his re­search. Ad­mit­ting that he suf­fered from bouts of de­pres­sion, An­ge­lo said, "I do get pe­ri­ods of de­pres­si­uon but as long as I have my books and my tablet, I am hap­py."

An­ge­lo is the founder of the Vir­tu­al Mu­se­um of Trinidad and To­ba­go her­itage re­source and writes a col­umn ti­tled "Back in Time" for the Trinidad Guardian. He has pub­lished sev­er­al books, in­clud­ing Walk­ing with the An­ces­tors–The His­toric Ceme­ter­ies of Trinidad, pub­lished in 2013; Snap­shots of the His­to­ry of Trinidad and To­ba­go, Vir­tu­al Glimpses in­to the Past; and Pan­cho's Dilem­ma, all pub­lished in 2016, which have earned him many ac­co­lades.

An­ge­lo was giv­en the keys to San Fer­nan­do by for­mer may­or Kaz­im Ho­sein (now Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment min­is­ter) in 2016 and was award­ed the Hum­ming­bird Medal (Gold) dur­ing lastyear's In­de­pen­dence Day awards.