Clifton Wong was a father with a difference who never waited to be treated on Father’s Day. Instead he cooked up a storm for his wife and five children and entertained them on the day when they should have been giving him that special treatment.
But it is not only for the sumptuous meals he cooked on Father’s Day that he would be sorely missed by his four daughters and one son. Instead, they would just miss simply hugging their daddy and wishing him all the best on his special day.
It is something that they took for granted in years gone by but now they wish they had just one more time, today.
Knowing that they would never be able to hear their father’s voice, which always encouraged them to do the best they could, makes it even harder for Wong’s children even as they resolve to honour his memory by always striving to do their best.
For Alecia, 21, Amanda, 20, Colvin, 16, Sheneeza, 15 and Lidya, 13, working towards making their father proud was not something they took lightly. On this day set aside to honour fathers they would be reminiscing on what a great man their father was.
So will 17-year-old Kellisa Arokium and her 15-year-old sister Kimberly. They readily recalled that their father Cecil Arokium played a great part in their lives although he was separated from their mother.
The children of Wong and Arokium in recent interviews with Stabroek News lamented that the saddest things about their fathers’ deaths was the fact that they had never been able to say goodbye by way of a funeral, because there were no bodies.
Today it is exactly one year since the burnt remains of Wong of Norton Street and Arokium of Rose Hall, Berbice, were discovered along with those of 17-year-old Nigel Torres, Lancelot Lee of South Ruimveldt, Horace Drakes and Compton Speirs of Meten-Meer-Zorg, Bonny Harry of Essequibo, and Dax Arokium of South Ruimveldt at the Lindo Creek camp, Berbice River.
The remains were discovered by owner of the mining camp, Leonard Arokium on June 21 last year. It is not clear when the men were killed neither has it been definitively confirmed that the bones found at the now infamous mining camp were indeed those of the missing miners. DNA samples were taken of the remains to be tested in a Jamaican Forensic Laboratory in August last year, but to date the results of such tests are still unavailable.
Meanwhile, it is not only the children of Wong and Arokium who would be missing them today but also those of Drakes, who had five children, the 10-year-old son of Speirs and the adult daughters of Harry.
For Dax Arokium it is a different story as his months-old son never got the opportunity to know him nor did he ever get the opportunity to lay eyes on his son before he was brutally murdered. The mother of his child, who gave her name as Onika, said it was still too painful to speak about how it was for the remainder of her pregnancy without Dax; and now her son would never know his father.
“Every time I think I am going forward I just end up being depressed…” was all Onika could muster when Stabroek News contacted her.
The two Arokiums were the brother and son respectively of the mining camp owner.
No closure
One of the wishes of 15-year-old Sheneeza is that one day she would get the opportunity to say a proper goodbye to her father.
“It is very hard; is like there is no closure, and that is hard. We never got to see anything of him,” the teenager said, slightly shaking her head.
She was sitting comfortably in the home she shares with her siblings and her mom, Collette Wong, and they even joked around a bit during the recent interview with this newspaper as they recalled the funnier side of their father.
But at other times the pain of losing him was etched on their faces and there were extended moments of silence as they attempted to put their pain into words.
“Since the death of my father things have never been the same, it is just so sad and to know we did not get no body to bury and we don’t know who killed him or why,” Sheneeza, one of the more outspoken of the five children, said.
She remembered that her father whenever he was not in the interior would sit with her and assist her with her homework. “He was very intelligent and he helped me a lot,” she said.
Her 13-year-old sister Lidya said her daddy never forgot her birthday and always tried to be at home on that special day. She only recently celebrated her birthday and said while she had a party and it was fun there were still some sadness as she “needed my daddy to be there.”
“I really miss him a lot,” she added, as she twirled one of her long plaits.
The two teenagers are working towards becoming a lawyer and nurse respectively as they said they knew that would make their father proud.
For 20-year-old Amanda their home is now “boring” without their father around, and she misses the many meals he cooked for them. Thinking ahead, she said her wedding day would be a happy and a sad occasion as she would have wanted her father to walk her down the aisle.
“I sometimes still cannot believe that he is not around or that he is not going to come through the door like he always did when he went away to work,” the young woman said.
Next month Wong would have celebrated his 48th birthday and 21-yera-old Alecia said that they were still not sure how they were going to get through that day. For her, Wong’s birthday is more important than Father’s Day, and it would take a lot of strength to get through it. She is the mother of a 19-month-old daughter and she is sad that her child would never have the opportunity to know her grandfather, whom she described as having a funny side although he was also a disciplinarian.
Wong’s widow, who from time to time said a word or two during the interview remarked that she wasn’t sure what sort of disciplinarian her husband was, because the children always went to him when she said no to something.
“It was always mommy says no and they go to daddy and he said yes and he never liked me to beat them,” Collette Wong said.
Alecia agreed with her mom, saying Collette never liked them going out, but when her father was around he would say, “let the children go” and many times he took them shopping.
Colvin said most of all he would miss his father’s laughter and the many things he did with him that only a son could do with a father. The young man, who one day hopes to become an electrician, recalled that his father was very intelligent and always encouraged him to read, not only novels, but the newspapers to keep abreast with what was happening in Guyana and around the world.
“We watched cricket together and he loved to watch National Geographic and he would tell me is something good to watch,” he said.
The children said since their mom had now become father and mother things had been hard, but God has been providing for them.
Their mother declined to talk about how difficult it had been for her being forced to become both father and mother after 22 years of marriage.
“If I should only speak I would burst into tears and I don’t want that. Let the children talk about how they remembered their father. Let them talk,” she said.
She did say that many days she felt mentally drained, “but I get my strength from praying and God has been good to me and my children.
Inspiration
“Things have been kind of rough since daddy died…” were the first words from Kellisa Arokium when Stabroek News spoke to her recently via telephone. The 17-year-old, who recently wrote the CXC exams, said her father played a significant role in her life as well as that of her sister.
Like the Wongs, she said it was even harder for her because they could not hold a funeral for her father and so she could not properly say goodbye.
“My father has always been an inspiration in my life and he was a big boost and he always told us to aim high,” she said.
She said her father always tried to spend Father’s Day with them as they were his only children and he attempted to spend as much time as possible with them whenever he was not working.
“The thing is even though my mother and father are separated, my father always played a role in our lives,” she said.
Her father encouraged her to become a lawyer one day or be a leader of some sort, and she hopes to honour his memory by becoming a lawyer. She wants to attend the University of Guyana come next September.
Her sister Kimberly, described her father as “a peacemaker” as he always wanted peace and always strove to make peace.
She said her father would take them out shopping and like many little girls, she missed those shopping trips.
“When I heard my father was dead, for days I couldn’t talk and even now sometimes I don’t believe it,” she said, adding that whenever her father was away his return was always an exciting event.
The last time she saw her father was on May 3 last year at his brother’s birthday party, and it was a memory she would have for the rest of her life.
The two girls live with their mother’s parents but their mother lives just a few streets away.
Still no answers
The relatives of the dead miners still have many questions about their deaths but from all indications no answers would be provided.
As for the police investigation, Crime Chief Seelall Persaud only recently told Stabroek News that the police had “definitively” concluded that the now dead Rondell ‘Fineman’ Rawlins and his gang were the ones who killed the miners.
The camp owner had from day one accused members of the joint services of carrying out the murders, but the charge has been vehemently and repeatedly denied by both the police and the army.
“What more can I say? I have said it all,” Leonard Arokium said recently when contacted.
