Drowning tragedy has ripple effect on family
After his sister’s drowning death, Obed Chattergoon’s relationship with his mother has not been the same.
“It was the summer of 2015. We were all living in Florida when my sister and mother went back to our home country of Trinidad for vacation. My dad also got sent there to work, so I was home alone.
“I was never very good at answering my phone. I don’t know if he called me or not. But then there was a knock on the door sometime in the evening. My half-sister showed up, and she was very distraught and crying. I thought, what happened? It was the day before my dad was going to show up back in Florida. So I wondered, did his plane crash or something? I assumed the worst. But I guess it was a different worst.
“She told me that my little sister was out at the beach and got caught by the current. She drowned. The Coast Guard and lifeguards were looking for her. There were helicopters searching in the night, but they couldn’t find her.
“The next morning I talked to my dad, and he said they found her body. I asked if she was alive. But even though I asked, I knew she wouldn’t have survived because she had been in the water for hours. So I flew down to Trinidad for the funeral, and then I went back to Florida.
“My mother is somewhere in Houston now, but we had a bit of a falling out. After she and my father got divorced, I still talked to her because I still loved her. But then she blamed me for my sister’s death, even though I had nothing to do with it.
“My mother never wanted to come to America. The reason she came here was, one, because of my education. She said if she didn’t come to America because of me, then she wouldn’t have gone back down to Trinidad on vacation and this horrible thing wouldn’t have happened. My sister wouldn’t have died.
“After that, I stopped talking to her. If that was the way she was going to act, then I didn’t need that discouragement in my life.”
— Obed Chattergoon
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