Shar­lene Ram­per­sad

“Just in the or­der they were born, they died.” Nicole Greenidge’s haunt­ing words as she re­count­ed the heart­break she and her fam­i­ly suf­fered with­in two-and-a-half months–from De­cem­ber 2021 to Feb­ru­ary 2022–when all three of her sons died one af­ter the oth­er.

It was the death of her youngest son, Yusuf Hen­ry, which put her in­to the na­tion­al lime­light in 2022 even as she strug­gled to com­pre­hend how such tragedy could be­fall her.

“I was in a quandary, what was re­al­ly go­ing on?” she asked her­self.

Greenidge told her heart-wrench­ing sto­ry in an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia at her San­gre Grande home sev­er­al weeks ago ahead of the first an­niver­sary of the Paria div­ing tragedy. Her son was one of four LM­CS divers who died in a Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed pipeline on Feb­ru­ary 25, 2022.

Greenidge said her jour­ney was dif­fer­ent from that of the oth­er fam­i­lies, as at the time, she was al­ready strug­gling to deal with the deaths of her first and sec­ond-born sons.

Araghah Henry

Her el­dest son, Araghah Hen­ry was 34 when he died on De­cem­ber 13, 2021. He had pre­vi­ous­ly been di­ag­nosed with can­cer and was thought to be in re­mis­sion when he fell ill again.

Af­ter ex­ten­sive test­ing, doc­tors told Araghah he had a blood clot in the brain. But be­fore he could be treat­ed, Araghah passed away.

“The day we found out what was ac­tu­al­ly the prob­lem be­cause he was swollen due to in­flam­ma­tion, we lost him that very said night,” Greenidge said.

Mar­cus Hen­ry, Greenidge’s sec­ond son, was a po­lice of­fi­cer. She said Mar­cus and Araghah shared a spe­cial bond and Mar­cus’ grief may have cost him his life.

 “The night Araghah died, Mar­cus stood in the rain all night. It was rain­ing, and he was just stand­ing out­side, we tried every­thing to get him to come in­side, but he wouldn’t move. He had told Araghah if any­thing hap­pened to him, he would be com­ing be­hind,” Greenidge re­called.

A lit­tle over two weeks lat­er, Greenidge was prepar­ing for an­oth­er fu­ner­al.

“He de­vel­oped a cold af­ter. I knew it was be­cause he stood in the rain and his clothes got wet and dried back on him. They said it was COVID, if he had de­vel­oped COVID, it would have been be­cause they put him in the ward with oth­er COVID pa­tients. He died from a heart at­tack. He called me the same day, he send a pic­ture of him­self with the mask on, and he called me Mom­my. I start­ed to cry one time be­cause I told my daugh­ter, Mar­cus doesn’t call me Mom­my, he calls me Nicole,” she said.

Bare­ly able to con­tain her tears, Greenidge re­called hav­ing to find the strength to bury Mar­cus.

Marcus Henry

She said it was at that time, she made a vow to keep Yusuf and her on­ly daugh­ter, Afeisha, close to her in hopes of pro­tect­ing them.

But on Feb­ru­ary 25, Afeisha re­ceived a call from one of Yusuf’s cowork­ers, in­form­ing her that an ac­ci­dent had hap­pened and Yusuf was miss­ing.

“She told me, 'Mom­my, I just get a phone call that some­thing hap­pen where Yusuf works, he and four oth­er divers went down to con­duct un­der­wa­ter works, and they were con­sid­ered miss­ing.' She didn’t have to fin­ish the state­ment, I al­ready start­ed to pan­ic, and I al­ready broke down,” Greenidge said.

The next sev­er­al days still haunt her, as she re­called sit­ting in the car park at Paria’s Pointe-a-Pierre fa­cil­i­ty, hop­ing and pray­ing that some mir­a­cle would bring her on­ly sur­viv­ing son back safe­ly.

Yusuf’s body was re­cov­ered on Feb­ru­ary 28, bring­ing her vig­il to a heart­break­ing end.

Yusuf Henry

Yusuf had four chil­dren while Mar­cus had two. Greenidge said her pri­ma­ry fo­cus now is en­sur­ing that her grand­chil­dren are well tak­en care of. She de­scribed Yusuf as a lov­ing, ded­i­cat­ed fa­ther who did every­thing he could to en­sure his chil­dren had what they want­ed.

She said that al­though she of­ten strug­gles with her grief, she tries not to miss work as every dol­lar counts.

“The pain nev­er stops, you just learn to deal with it, that’s what I could say, we just learn to deal with it be­cause every day we are re­mind­ed, it's tough. Up till now, we haven’t re­ceived any kind of as­sis­tance from Paria. Every day is like that, I does try not to miss out too much days on work be­cause I still want to make that mon­ey at the end of the month so that I could lend a hand some­where,” she said.

 Greenidge said over the Christ­mas sea­son, Good Samar­i­tans reached out to the fam­i­ly, pro­vid­ing toys, gro­ceries and mon­ey for the chil­dren.

And al­though she was on the brink of mark­ing the three first an­niver­saries of her sons' deaths, Greenidge found joy in her grand­chil­dren’s smiles on Christ­mas Day.

“They had an ok Christ­mas I would say, I was very hap­py about that be­cause I know every­body had food­stuff, and they got toys. I would say Christ­mas went well for them, and it went well for me too see­ing that they were hap­py,” she said.

She wants jus­tice for Yusuf, say­ing he and his col­leagues de­served bet­ter than to be left to die.

"My son was so full of life, I say he was robbed of that. I want to see jus­tice and some­one held ac­count­able. And I want it to be over quick­ly, the longer it goes on, the hard­er it is for us," she said.

"Let us try to heal," she ap­pealed.

Greenidge said she paid at­ten­tion to the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry set up to in­ves­ti­gate the tragedy as much as she could, and she is hope­ful her grand­chil­dren will be fi­nan­cial­ly com­pen­sat­ed for their fa­ther's death.

Nicole Greenidge in a pensive mood while speaking about her son, diver Yusuf Henry during an interview at her home.

ROBERTO CODALLO

Nicole Greenidge shows a collage of pictures of her family.

ROBERTO CODALLO