Last Tuesday I was preparing to travel to Berbice for an assignment when a colleague called to tell me that Tina Insanally had died.  I felt as though someone had punched me right into the heart because one did not connect the dark angel of death with this child so full of love, laughter and life:  A gentle and loving child whose entire life had been a paean of love and happiness: A child who encapsulated all that was generous and joyful and who was the special treasure of the Insanally family, who had nurtured me through some of the worst years and experiences of my life.  I was suffused with grief for that family because I was imagining their respective reactions to that horrific news of their – just hours before, healthy and normal daughter and sister.  The vehicle came and had to leave without me because I was lying supine in shock, unable to assimilate what Oliver Insanally called this ‘surreal’ news.
I first began working at Guyenterprise in 1990 and found kindred spirits in Vic Insanally and his family.  Largely sheltered all my life until then, I immediately felt at home because these were people who shared my values and who had a strong sense of social responsibility, even the children.  It was this sense of social responsibility and rare humanity that saw their very young elder daughter Sarah volunteering at the Red Cross and only son Oliver rescuing waifs and strays – among them Dolores, Guyenterprise’s own mascot cat, which Oliver loved with a passion and cared for beyond compassion, so much so that he currently heads the Guyana Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (GSPCA).
It was during Sarah’s stint of volunteering at the Red Cross that she became besotted with a doll-like baby whom she insisted her parents adopt.  Pat Insanally had grown her family and certainly did not need that deep commitment and extra responsibility that caring for a baby demands; but as with Sarah, Vic and Pat Insanally loved the 16-month-old infant and there was no looking back.  Tina Maria became what mom Pat described as the ‘light and joy’ of the Insanally family and, I may add, all those whose lives she touched in one way or another.
During a period when I shared an office with her father I was privileged to witness the strong and beautiful bond between father and daughter.  Tina would run into the office at the end of the day and share her day with her loving dad, who, no matter how busy he was, would take her on his lap and become totally engrossed in the conversation they shared, or he would take her little hand in his as he went around Guyenterprise.  He was absolute mush in the way he loved her.
Mom Pat was the practical one who ensured that practical things were done, such as getting her to school and extra-curricular activities on time, ensuring that homework was done etcetera, but the love and trust between mother and daughter was visible for all to see.
Big sister Sarah, who had found a lovely doll that she insisted that she wanted, was her second mother – a very indulgent and loving second mother.
Lisa was nearer her age and they could relate to each other as sisters.
But she idolized big brother Oliver, and he loved her right back in equal measure.  The gentle patience Oliver took with his little tormentor was a joy to watch, because theirs was one of the most beautiful brother and sister relationships that I have ever seen.  His painful cry of “Parvati, my baby is gone” haunts me.  During this time of grief, when he was hungry to recall shared experiences, my sister reminded him of a time when Tina was sick and miserable with a bout of chicken pox and Ollie was desperate to relieve her – and his, suffering; because he was absolutely miserable to see her in such discomfort.  My nephew was also suffering the same fate so Ollie brought her to see if the concoction that my sister was using to relieve Marlon’s itchiness and pain could also help to abate Tina’s.  It worked, much to Oliver’s highly visible relief, and I think his emotional distress was much more than Tina’s suffering.
At the Insanally home Vic looked physically shrunken in his pain and mom Pat poignantly asked: “What are we being punished for, Parvati?” I had no answers and no words, because these were good people – every member of the family, who always reached out a helping hand to others.  Only recently a colleague, Shirley Thomas, asked me if I knew anyone who could help a family from the hinterland to take their dead child back for burial.  There are two men I could always call on in instances like these – Bish Panday and Vic, without fear of refusal.  I called Vic and he immediately made arrangements for Shirley to provide the money to the family so that they could take their child for burial back home in a remote hinterland village.
When Tina was buried I was in Berbice honouring a prior commitment I had made, but at a memorial service held at the St. James-The-Less church on Sunday afternoon to celebrate Tina’s life emotions ran raw as she was eulogised by some of the myriad persons who loved her.
Every life Tina Insanally touched she infused with a rare joy, because she was a child of light and happiness.  She was a free spirit who probably did not belong to this world but only visited for a short while to spread her special light and has now winged her way to her real home in Heaven.  One night her uncle Rudy described her to me as, among other qualities, “very witty” and full of so much joy she made everyone happy.
When daddy was not in office she would veer to Auntie Parvati and trustingly relate all her tales, and ask unending questions while her dad’s work was sidelined, because she radiated such innocent joy that brought great comfort in the dark abyss of my personal life, especially during a time of grave distress when my teenaged daughter, who was left alone for long hours while I worked, had left my home to live with my sister, and I was so touched by the pleasure and comfort she unknowingly gave me that I wrote the following poem:

You bend your head and firmly grip
A pencil in your hand
Your squiggles and scratches a fertile trip
To children’s wonderland

You raise your head and smile at me
It warms my heart right through
your smile’s full of mischievous childish glee
I steal a hug from you

You are a flower just in bud
Your petals yet unfurled
You are a promise of all things good
A blessing to the world

You waft into lives like a mellow song
Showering rays of love
The family to which you now belong
Has been blessed by the Lord above

You are joy and light to dad and mom
A pet to brother Ollie
For Sister Sarah a special prize won
With Lisa shared conspiracies

Your warm body, your trusting eyes
Are memories sweet and sharp
Of a beloved girl who denies
That she’s the jewel of my heart

Your mommy calls, you have to go
To a love fully assured
God bless you so you’ll always know
This love is well-secured

And the love of the Insanallys for their daughter and sister Tina was always fully assured and well secured.
Merely days before she left this world Tina, who loved singing like her dad did (Vic mesmerized me once at a karoake with a rendition of “O Holy Night”), had sung in her sister Lisa’s club before she complained of feeling unwell and succumbed – within hours.
Losing Tina this way is like a dagger in the heart and seems very illogical, and only the Lord would know the depth of the agony of the people who loved her – her mom and dad, her big brother Ollie, her sisters Sarah and Lisa, and her nephews and nieces, and the countless other relatives and friends wh
ose lives she touched; but maybe this was Tina’s ordained time on earth and the Lord gifted her to the Insanally family as a blessing.
Dad Vic says as he goes through her writings he is realizing even more what a wonderful child she was. Perhaps genetically, but certainly through association and influence with and by the Insanally family, Tina was gifted and brilliant.  At the time of her passing she was on vacation from classes in Social Psychology at college in Canada and her professor in Canada said that in a class where she excelled above her seniors he gave her 5 out of 5, which he had never done before.
Whatever the reason the Lord called her home, she has touched many lives with happiness and her special brand of joie de vivre.  Maybe by accepting that this is not a loss, nor was it intended to punish, but that Tina was a special gift of God to the Insanallys and the lives of those whom she touched for two decades, until her ordained time was spent, may bring some level of comfort to all those bereaved by her passing.
Tina lived a life of achievement and content filled with happiness and love.  It is much more than most people achieve in a full lifetime of threescore and ten years – and maybe, who knows, all of those to whom she gave happiness at some time or another may very well have been touched by an angel.