(Jamaica Gleaner) ALTHOUGH IT has been 14 years since his five-year-old daughter was mowed down by a gunshot as she stood waiting on her dad, the pain is still fresh for Sheckton Hudson. He still wears a piece of her on his heart every day.
Hudson even drives around with the clothes Shayna was wearing on that fateful day.
Sighing deeply as he stared blankly in the open on Monday, Hudson said that his daughter died on April 25, 2006, in Kingston shortly after he had promised to bring her a ribbon after losing hers.
Approximately 10 minutes after that phone call, he felt a sharp pang – as if he was dying – which was an omen of the unfolding tragedy.
“By the time I drive out and reach at Spanish Town toll, somebody call me and say you know your daughter just get lick down.
“… When I drive go there, I didn’t see her, but I see the guy that hit her down because him did already dead. He got shot while she was on the plaza waiting on me and him run straight into her,” Hudson, better known by his nickname ‘Chucky’, said.
Two other children were injured in the crash. Hudson himself, paralysed by shock, crashed moments after leaving the accident scene.
To this day, he lives with regret at the loss of his daughter.
“From that, it’s like the whole world change. Can’t believe a my daughter where me and her just talk,” Hudson told The Gleaner.
The 46-year-old father of seven said that he has often been urged to seek closure but has found his own coping mechanisms.
One of the hangovers from Shayna’s death is a suitcase containing her personal effects which never leave the trunk of his car.
Hudson wears daily the button distributed at Shayna’s funeral as a memento to keep her close even though she has physically left him.
“If I don’t have it on, it’s like I get very nervous. People might see it most time and say why him always have on that, but them don’t know,” said Hudson. “It’s how me can deal with my pain because me really a hurt.”
The air-condition repairman, who operates from a location near the intersection of Molynes Road and Seaward Drive in St Andrew, said that he puts premium value on family time. In his opinion, a father’s love trumps a mother’s.
The emotional trauma has inspired the doting dad to transform the walls of his weather-beaten premises into a canvas of parenting wisdom with child-friendly quotes.
Some of the messages include ‘Why rape a child?’, ‘Always remember to feed the children’, and ‘Children are the greatest gifts’. A staunch advocate against corporal punishment, he said that he even chased from his workplace a woman who was beating a child.
Letting go of Shayna, Hudson said, is impossible. It’s all the more worse as Father’s Day, celebrated on the third Sunday in June, inches closer.
Even now he lives in fear of getting another phone call with news of tragedy.
“I love my kids them, but it’s like when them around me, I get nervous,” Hudson said.
“It’s like I feel like something is going to happen.”
danae.hyman@gleanerjm.com
