Seated in a tattered hammock, swinging listlessly in his ramshackle home atop a hill overlooking a graveyard, Dhanraj Sonilal’s heart has not been whole since 2022. That was the year he lost his beloved Deomatie, mother to his two children and his other half.
“I miss everything about her. We used to operate like friends, not husband and wife. Every footstep I make she would be with me. That is what I miss, her company,” he said, fighting back the tears.
“That was a person I met and I never knew I would meet a person like that. Everything was just perfect about her,” he said.
The 56-year-old man said her sickness came suddenly and mercilessly.
“Well, just like that she end up getting sick. She got a sore on her foot and she remained a while with it. Her foot started to swell. But eventually, I said, ‘Girl, it looks like the other foot is swelling too,’ and she said yes and then her whole body started to swell.
“She started to get sick more and more until she ended up in a wheelchair and after that, she died about six months after, actually maybe four to five months,” he recalled.
A relative later explained that Deomatie was diabetic.
Since then, Sonilal has lost his zeal for life.
The family’s home is located at the top of a hill overlooking a graveyard. Deomatie is not buried there. She was cremated under Hindu rites.
Separating the living from the dead is a small garden. Sonilal said when Deomatie was alive, they earned their living from it.
“When she was around, I used to plant fine crops, sometimes bodi, and she would go out and sell it; cucumber she used to go right down the hill there, or by the market and sell,” he said.
Since her death, the garden has been neglected. Sonilal said he gets dizzy spells whenever he works the land alone. His inability to work has plunged the family into abject poverty.
He said his 17-year-old daughter has tried to shake him out of his grief.
“Sometimes, the girl would say ‘Daddy, Mummy gone already, you know, and we have to live with it.’”
Their wooden home, made mostly of plywood, almost parallels Sonilal’s state—broken and in desperate need of a helping hand.
There are large holes in the walls and a leaking roof. An outhouse in the backyard is an indication that the structure does not have pipe-borne water. The two-room house is sparsely furnished, with two beds in one room for Sonilal and his 15-year-old son, while the other is empty. Some shoes and bits of clothing are strewn on the floor giving the impression that a girl once lived there.
When asked where his daughter sleeps, Sonilal said the Form Four student recently left and stays with her aunt, as there is no electricity for her to finish her school assignments.
He fears that the 20-year-old structure is on the brink of collapse.
There is a generator in the yard but Sonilal said they recently discovered something was wrong with it.
“Yesterday my son said, ‘Daddy let us watch a little news nah,’ so he bought gas for the generator, but when we started it, it didn’t want to work. So he went on his bed and said, ‘Daddy, we could have been watching news all now?’”
Coming up the hill to the home with his bicycle in tow, the 15-year-old gave a weary greeting. It was clear he had not been to school that day. Sonilal said since Deomatie’s death, the teen has lost interest in his studies and has now become the family’s primary breadwinner.
“If someone has a little work to do, he would go do that, so that is how we maintaining right now,” Sonilal said.
However, that usually means living off a meagre $400 for the month.
“Right now, we just eating only, the rest of the things we have to do without. The councillor does drop a little hamper for me and sometimes a neighbour would have a hamper and choose me to drop it for,” Sonilal said.
“She (his daughter) gets help from the school to travel. Since I got sick, I spoke with her principal and the principal said they would provide that help for her. Sometimes, she does go to school without money because I don’t have any to give her,” he said.
Doctors have not been able to diagnose the cause of his constant dizzy spells. All he knows is that it started shortly after Deomatie died and after three trips to the hospital by ambulance, he is now afraid his grief will kill him.
“I think about why this had to happen, why I feel sick because I was a man that first thing in the morning, I am in the garden at six o’clock to provide and for the least, I would make $1,000 a week going to the market and now I can’t hold a $1,000 in six months,” he explained.
All Sonilal wants is assistance to repair and fortify the house for his children’s sake.
“In case anything happens to me, they will have something,” he said.
He also believes if the home is in a better condition and he has one less thing to worry about, he would be in a better position to return to work the land that he and Deomatie once toiled on. He also wants his son to finish secondary school.
Sonilal and his son do not have a cellphone. Anyone wishing to assist the family with their home or their immediate needs can contact their relative Neelawatee at 275-0422.
