By Shirley Thomas

TWENTY-three-year-old Jose Singh of Stewartville, West Coast Demerara who, two weeks ago fell from a coconut tree at Parika, East Bank Essequibo, succumbed to his injuries last Thursday at the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation (GPHC).Singh breathed his last at about 20:00 hrs after two surgeries, the second having been on Wednesday, the day before he died, his tearful mother Sharon Mohammed told the Guyana Chronicle.

She is grateful to the doctors and nursing staff at the Georgetown Public Hospital for the attentive and professional medical care they had given her son. The family would also like to thank those persons, both at home and abroad, who so kindly responded to their appeal for help to defray the cost of MRI and CT scans, so necessary during his illness.

Special thanks also to those who visited and prayed with him during his critical moments.

Singh had climbed the tree to cut branches when he fell to the ground and suffered life-threatening injuries. He was first rushed to the Leonora Cottage Hospital before, moments later, being rushed to the GPHC, where he was diagnosed as having suffered a fractured neck, spinal fracture, fracture to his left leg, head injuries, and internal concussions.

Jose used to earn money through stripping coconut fronds and making pointer brooms which he would sell to augment his limited family income.

At the time that tragedy struck, he had gone up into the coconut tree to cut branches to make his pointer brooms for sale.

The incident happened at about 13:30 hrs on Thursday, March 24. His mother painfully recalled that with Wednesday being Phagwah Day and Friday being Good Friday, Jose had decided to cut the branches to make brooms on Thursday, so as to be able to sell them on the next working day – Saturday, but he had no idea it would have ended tragically.

Sharon said that nobody knew when her son fell, but shortly after 13:30 hrs, one of his sisters passed by the coconut tree and saw him lying on the ground unconscious.

She raised an alarm and relatives picked him up and rushed him to hospital.

Jose died in service to his family. He is survived by his wife Roshanie; their two children, parents, five siblings and other relatives.
Born in Venezuela, he was offered up in the Seventh-Day Adventist Church as a lad. He came to Guyana with his mother at age 13. His deeply distraught mother, Sharon, has said she is garnering strength from the fact that her son was able to repent and surrender his life to the Lord once more before breathing his last.

“Even though I weep over losing him, I am so happy that I know where my son is, and that he has gone to be with the Lord,” she cried.