Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

Sev­en­teen years af­ter last see­ing her cousin, Jen­nifer Mor­ris-Lit­tre­an was ea­ger­ly await­ing their re­union in To­ba­go last week­end. But hours be­fore they were ex­pect­ed to meet, she re­ceived news he had died, and now she is left to grieve 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 Sun­day at Buc­coo Reef Ma­rine Park—just hours away from fi­nal­ly see­ing his fam­i­ly again.

Mor­ris had re­turned with friends for a short va­ca­tion in Trinidad, and cel­e­brat­ed his birth­day a few days ago. He promised he would not re­turn to Grena­da be­fore vis­it­ing her.

“They had made plans to come and look for me this week­end,” she said.

“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-bot­tomed reef tour boat and en­coun­tered dif­fi­cul­ties in the wa­ter. A British na­tion­al, de­scribed as his friend, jumped in to res­cue him but suf­fered cat­a­stroph­ic 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 ward­ed at the Scar­bor­ough Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal.

Mor­ris had re­turned to Grena­da about a decade ago, build­ing his home and set­tling there af­ter many years abroad. A fa­ther of four chil­dren born in Eng­land, he of­ten spoke fond­ly of fam­i­ly con­nec­tions and en­joyed re­turn­ing to To­ba­go’s sea at­trac­tions when he vis­it­ed.

“The last con­ver­sa­tion we had, some­thing had fall­en, and he told me to pick it up be­cause I was younger than him. We al­ways joked as a fam­i­ly; we don’t take any­thing too se­ri­ous­ly,” his cousin re­called.

She said he had al­ways en­joyed the is­land’s nat­ur­al beau­ty, of­ten vis­it­ing Ny­lon Pool and No Man’s Land on boat tours. “Those boats take you out where the wa­ter is shal­low and you see all the fish. Then peo­ple come off, bathe, and lime with mu­sic and food be­fore head­ing back. Neil loved those trips,” she ex­plained.

Still in shock, Mor­ris-Lit­tre­an said the tragedy is even hard­er to bear be­cause of her re­cent per­son­al loss­es. “From Oc­to­ber 2021 to Jan­u­ary 2022, I lost nine close rel­a­tives, in­clud­ing two sis­ters and two broth­ers-in-law. So this news is very hard. You don’t ever get over it, but you learn to live with grief.”

She said that while they were on­ly hours away from fi­nal­ly see­ing each oth­er again, she would now hold tight­ly to the mem­o­ries of their last meet­ing in 2008.

“I was re­al­ly look­ing for­ward to see­ing him. In­stead, I have to live with the grief of know­ing the last time I saw my cousin was al­most two decades ago,” she said.

The To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly has since con­firmed the in­ci­dent and said that it was in con­tact with Grena­di­an and British of­fi­cials to pro­vide sup­port to the fam­i­lies af­fect­ed.