The last of the beloved band of parang broth­ers, Willie Lara, died yes­ter­day af­ter­noon at the age of 84.Lara, along with sib­lings Tito, Toy and Vic­tor, com­prised the leg­endary Lara Broth­ers, whose in­dige­nous mu­sic was pop­u­lar dur­ing the Christ­mas sea­son.Lara died at the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex, Mt Hope, af­ter go­ing for med­ical tests on Mon­day.

His step-daugh­ter An­toinette Pereira told the T&T Guardian that the fam­i­ly ob­served the cul­tur­al icon's hands swollen and want­ed to en­sure all was okay with him. Part of the pro­ce­dure while he was hos­pi­talised, she said, was to in­sert a cam­era that would look at his heart to en­sure there were no ab­nor­mal­i­ties.

How­ev­er, Pereira said when Lara was com­ing out of the anes­the­sia, he ex­pe­ri­enced an ir­reg­u­lar heart rate and an­oth­er dose of anes­the­sia was used in or­der to se­date him. He was then tak­en to ICU for mon­i­tor­ing and on Thurs­day he was trans­ferred to the High De­pen­den­cy Unit. Lara passed away at 1.15 pm yes­ter­day."He was not ail­ing. So this is a shock for all of us," Pereira said.She said the fam­i­ly was dev­as­tat­ed by the loss. Lara was the fa­ther of eight chil­dren