— Sheema Mangar’s mom relates spending Christmas without her

THE Christmas season has always been touted as a time for family, friends and togetherness. It is a time for merry-making and magic and a time when the endless cleaning, cooking and shopping culminates.

For the family of the late Sheema Mangar, Christmas (and life, in general) has not been the same since September 10, 2010, when Mangar was robbed of her Blackberry cellphone, and hit down and dragged by a car after attempting to retrieve it.
It has been seven years since the young bank employee, who had a promising life ahead of her, was gruesomely killed.

It has been seven Christmases for the family without their daughter and sister. The hands of time have turned indeed, the memory of Sheema remains etched in the minds and hearts of her family.
Mother of the young woman, Radica Thakoor, invested her time in plying her trade in the Plaisance market, selling all the Christmas items needed for the grand feast, but she took a few minutes off to speak with the Guyana Chronicle about Christmas without Sheema.
“For me, this is something to explain,” a tearful Thakoor related. “It’s either it makes you stronger or it destroys you; one of the two. You gotta get the strength, you gotta get the courage. I can’t let the person who murdered my daughter, murder me too,” she said.
Reflecting on what the Christmas season used to be like before, Thakoor related that the family would decorate their home for the season and on Christmas Day, they would have a traditional family get-together, even though they would have spent half of the day selling in the market.

“Christmas is about your children [and] as long as they’re happy, you’re happy,” Thakoor said and explained that for her, as a mother, as long as her children are happy, she would be happy — Christmas or not.

NORMAL TIME
But since that day in 2010, the mother lamented that Christmas time is just a normal time of the year, despite the continuity of the ‘Christmas get-together’.
The home is no longer decorated, and according to Sheema’s mother, “Deep down, there’s something missing.”

That something, of course, is the presence of Sheema.

Thakoor recalled too that her daughter was a Sunday school teacher and each year, she would usually host Christmas parties at the church for the children.
Not only Sheema’s family miss her, but inevitably her Sunday school students who would have all aged now, must surely miss her as well.

While the parties have continued in the Christmas spirit and the Sheema’s family continues to contribute to the party every year, Thakoor noted that she gradually stopped attending the church because it brings back painful memories of her daughter.
Thakoor’s husband, Lalbachan Mangar and their son Jason also continue to miss Sheema dearly. However, they both “keep silent” and “shut out their feelings” according to Thakoor.
Family members and friends would check up on the family every now and then, especially at Christmas, but they have learned to move on.

NOT EASY
For the mother, it is not such an easy task.
“I ask how I lived without my daughter for seven years… I always think what she’d be like, but sometimes I don’t wanna go down that lane,” she said.
And remembering Sheema gets more painful nowadays, Thakoor related, noting that before, it was like a dream, rather a nightmare, but now reality has been settling in that her daughter is no longer by her side.
Seven Christmases later since that tragic day, there has seemingly been no progress in identifying the perpetrators.

Much hope was reignited in the family in mid-2016 when then Crime Chief Wendell Blanham re-opened Sheema’s case, among others. One year later that hope still lingers that the family will receive justice for their daughter.
“The sense of justice must prevail, we must know the reason, we must know the truth and for seven years, there has been no justice,” the mother said and bemoaned: “We wanna know what happened, what really took place.”

But while justice must prevail, the mother contended that ultimately, she and her family are the “losers” because they have already lost Sheema.
Nevertheless, to all families experiencing this kind of grief and injustice, Thakoor said: “Get the courage, get the strength. It hurts, I know, but you gotta get the courage and the strength at this time. You stand up strong, you stand up tall [and] you stand up for justice.”