While most parents busied themselves shopping this Christmas for gifts for their children, a mother and father grapple with the loss of their eight-year-old son.
“He could have been with me now and we would have went and shop,” said Roxanne Hubbard, who noted that the privilege was taken from her. “I tell myself that God loved him more than I did, that’s why he took him…and I have to live with that.”
As she prepared her home for the holidays, she was constantly bombarded with memories of her son’s voice, of Valentine’s Day
when he gave her a broken rose, fighting to be her Valentine, of the night when he woke up, screaming for pain, and even the sound of her own screams when she heard of his death.
On February 15, one day after St. Valentine’s Day, Joshua Hubbard died suddenly while receiving medical attention at a private hospital, hours after he was pushed down by a classmate in his school yard.
Joshua, a Grade Three Student, attended St. Margaret’s Primary School in the city. He lived with his mother and father in Kitty, Georgetown. He had spent his last Christmas riding a bicycle that his father had bought him all day.
Hubbard said that the memories of her son in their home would slip in and out of her, almost as an endless reminder of things that she could never experience again. The only things she has left, she said, were the memories and unending days whenever she sees a little boy around Joshua’s age and feels the full emptiness of her loss.
“This Christmas is going to be sad because it’s going to be different. I trained Joshua not to take things that are not his and it was really rough… it wasn’t easy adjusting to waking up every day without him or watching him go to school. I know I will miss him…” she said.
According to Hubbard, one memory which plagues her every day for the last ten months was February 14, the day when she met Joshua at the backdoor of their home and he gave her the small rose. “When he came home from school that day, I met him at the back door and he gave me the rose and I kissed him and he said… that he loved me,” she said. “Then he left and did everything as normal…he played with the other children downstairs, he did his homework, he eat and he bathe….”
Joshua was allegedly pushed by another child in his class who wanted the rose that he had bought for his mother and became angry when he could not take it away. “He fixed it back for me,” she said with tears in her eyes. “The rose was broken and he fixed it and brought it home for me…his mother…. He didn’t want to lose that rose…it’s sad that he was just eight years old and he would fight for me.”
Hubbard recalled last Christmas when her husband surprised Joshua with a bicycle. “…Everything was good. We watched movies together, we ate together. He showed us so much love,” she stated, recalling that he had bought her and his father gifts for Christmas. “But the big surprise of the day was when his father told him to go and bathe and he said ‘Daddy why you sending me to bathe?’ But we didn’t tell him anything until he finished bathing and when he saw the bicycle he laughed and kissed up his father…he was so happy,” she said.
“He was such a pleasant child…when I see other boys on the road I would always think of him…he is always here…everywhere I turn, when I lie down…we even use to eat from the same plate. My son was a good little boy and no matter how I try I can’t forget that or him,” she added.
“Some days it hurts a lot. There are some days I would sit down and remember… remember everything. I couldn’t eat… my aunt told me to stop it, that it already happened but still I couldn’t get that night out of my head when we keep calling him ‘Joshua! Joshua!’ and he would just look at us lost,” the woman recounted.
A post mortem examination performed on Joshua’s body showed that he had died as a result of a fractured spine, blunt trauma to the neck and haemorrhaging in the brain.
Hubbard said that what also hurt a lot was the knowledge that her husband was crying a lot for their son. “He doesn’t tell me but I know he cries for him. It really hurt him…it really hurts to lose your child and know that you will never see them again or hear them. He doesn’t want me to see but I know and I feel it,” she explained.
She said that three months ago they had gone into the Education Ministry for the findings of the ministry’s investigation into Joshua’s death but they were told that they would receive a call. “To this day we haven’t had a call,” she said, expressing her frustration with the ministry’s sloth in releasing the information. “We know that he wouldn’t come back. We can’t do the child that did this anything because it could have been Joshua that pushed someone else’s son. But no one has come forward and told us what happen.” Ten months has past and the ministry is yet to relay the information of its findings.
Orin Hubbard, Joshua’s father had said that he felt bad because of the way the Ministry was handling his son’s death. “If was somebody close to them, something better would a come out. But everybody just sit back and relax. No concern,” he said.
