Sev­en­teen years af­ter last see­ing her cousin, Jen­nifer Mor­ris-Lit­tre­an was ea­ger­ly await­ing their re­union in To­ba­go this week­end. But in­stead of wel­com­ing him in­to her home, she is now mourn­ing his sud­den death.

Her cousin, 71-year-old Neil Mor­ris, who was born in Grena­da, grew up in Trinidad and lat­er spent much of his young life in the Unit­ed King­dom, drowned on Sat­ur­day at Buc­coo Reef Ma­rine Park—just hours be­fore see­ing his fam­i­ly again.

He had re­turned on a short va­ca­tion in Trinidad, where he cel­e­brat­ed his birth­day days ear­li­er. He trav­elled with friends and promised he would not re­turn to Grena­da with­out vis­it­ing her.

“They had made plans to come and look for me this week­end. I can­celled every­thing to­day be­cause I was anx­ious to see him,” Mor­ris-Lit­tre­an told Guardian Me­dia. “The last time we met was in 2008, and now I have to live with the grief that it will nev­er hap­pen again.”

Ac­cord­ing to re­ports, Mor­ris fell from a glass-bot­tom reef tour boat and got in­to dif­fi­cul­ty in the wa­ter. A British na­tion­al, de­scribed as his friend, jumped in to res­cue him but suf­fered se­vere in­juries. “They said my cousin fell off the boat and his friend dived in to save him. Neil drowned, and the young man who tried to help lost both legs,” she said.

The in­jured man re­mains hos­pi­talised in To­ba­go.