(Jamaica Gleaner) MATERNAL INSTINCT jolted Joan Watson into realising that something was wrong when her 17-year-old daughter Chrisey-Ann Davis had not returned from her room some time after eating a meal on Monday evening.
Little did Watson know that the desperate search for her daughter would end with her chubby figure hanging by a telephone cord from a pear tree in their backyard.
It is unclear what drove the teenager to end her life but there are theories that she might have been troubled by psychological trauma from a nagging back injury and the life changes caused by her limping gait.
“I never know my child was planning to kill herself,” Watson said tearfully as she sat under a tree looking at a graduation picture of Chrisey-Ann, from New Providence Primary, and a Valentine’s Day card signed by her daughter.
The Mona Common, St Andrew, family was in mourning on Tuesday as they recalled Chrisey’s ambition of becoming a doctor.
An aunt of Chrisey-Ann’s told The Gleaner that she was shocked at the tragic turn of events on what seemed to be a normal day when the 17-year-old had reportedly shown no signs of stress.
“Yesterday, she deh inna di yard fine, fine, all a interview her nephews pretending they were at a job interview. It took us by surprise,” said the aunt, who requested that her name not be published.
The family traced Chrisey-Ann’s pain to a freak accident on Easter Sunday when she fell from a mango tree and sustained serious injuries to her back.
Chrisey-Ann’s aunt is convinced that the back injury, robbing her of much of her independence, had been playing on her mind. The stratospheric costs of medical intervention and therapy may have also added to the pangs of immobility.
“[She] can’t bend and have to call another family to assist her. The plates cost $600,000 and she was probably wondering where the money going come from,” the aunt said.
Chrisey-Ann, a student of Kingston High, took her life one month shy of her 18th birthday and a year after the death of her beloved dad, with whom she had a very close relationship. He also died on a Monday.
Watson is haunted by her recollection of the lead-up to Chrisey-Ann’s tragic end after having what turned out to be the last supper.
“She sat there ‘til around four, five o’clock. She get up and said, ‘Mommy, I want the food now to eat. I was going tell her to share it but I said let me go and do it,” the teen’s mom said.
“She took it and go inside her room and she eat and wash her plate and turn it down and go back inside her room.”
That would be the last time Watson would see her daughter alive.
Watson told our news team that Chrisey-Ann went back inside her room and started to scribble something on paper but remains baffled where the sheet is now or what was written.
The family is, however, strongly denying claims that a dispute with an older sibling hours earlier may have triggered Chrisey’s ultimate action.
Around 6:30, Watson became suspicious of her daughter’s absence and went to Chrisey-Ann’s room.
“Mi say, ‘But she nuh pass me outside.’ … Mi look under her bed and mi don’t see her, and mi say, ‘Chrisey run weh ya now?’”
Even that eventuality would have left her with a thread of hope. But when Watson ventured outside, she ended up screaming uncontrollably at the sight of the “swinging” frame of Chrisey.
A frantic call for help saw Chrisey-Ann’s siblings running to Watson’s assistance, but they were too late. Relentless attempts at cardiopulmonary resuscitation and shouts for the teen to wake up could not bring her back.
The family is now left with only memories of Chrisey-Ann’s jovial spirit.
“She mek yuh laugh. She run joke, she talk all type of things. She was a happy child when she small, so I don’t know what trigger her off from she get big,” said Watson.
But reflections on Chrisey-Ann’s Easter mishap indicate that the suffering associated with the injury might have scarred her mentally as well. According to her mother, Chrisey-Ann often lamented “pain in her side” and wanted to visit a doctor.
“Sometime she would a say, ‘Mommy, I wonder if me shoulda did dead when mi drop out the tree?’ When mi did a drop out, mi see mi whole life flash in front me and say, ‘Mi nuh bother want dead again. Mi want live,” Watson said.