IN JAMAICA (TRAGIC): The agony of burying a mother and son as Shelleta Reid scorched by double tragedy....Death of her mother Jocelyn Bryan 77 y-o and her son Gavin Green, 34 on Mother's Day

BY SEAN A WILLIAMS Assistant Sport Editor williamss@jamaicaobserver.com  Sunday, May 17, 2015    

Shelleta Reid was in advanced preparation to fly from her Massachusetts home to visit her country of birth, Jamaica, for the solemn occasion of burying her mother Jocelyn Bryan.

Firemen get busy at the scene of the accident.

Bryan, 77, had died on Sunday, May 3, from complications from a stroke she had suffered two weeks earlier.

Reid, 53, was distraught by the passing of her mother, and the patriarch of the Bryan clan.

Her face was still stained by tears from the loss, when one week later to the day, her phone rang.

On the other end of Reid's cellular phone was the bearer of bad news. And in her case, more bad news.

Reid, the mother of five, was all morning last Sunday receiving Mother's Day greetings and salutations from far and wide. They were plaudits well deserved, as she is a highly-regarded mother of exemplary qualities.

But in a chilling twist, the news no mother wants to hear rammed into her already feeble state of mind like a wrecking ball.

The White Horses, St Thomas native, was informed that her fourth child, Gavin Green, 34, a cab driver, had perished in a motor vehicle accident as he drove with a female companion to Montego Bay.

Reid, on hearing the dreadful fact, collapsed at home and had to be rushed to an area hospital in Hyannis Port, the quiet seaside town in Massachusetts, where she has called home for nearly 10 years.

A week later, Reid is still finding it difficult, impossible even, to come to grips with the death of her son, and before him, her mother.

Fate, in one fell swoop, had robbed this loving mother of two of the dearest people in her life.

(L) BRYAN ... suffered a stroke and died.
(R) Shelleta Reid, mother of Gavin Green.

"I can't believe my baby is gone... I just can't believe it. I lost mama and now my baby," Reid managed to say between heart-wrenching weeping.

The community of White Horses where Green grew up and lived, was plunged into a dark hole of mourning as its members tried to make sense of it all.

Relatives and friends seemed in a daze, trying in failed attempts to wrap their minds around the double tragedy of this family.

As the news of Green's death spread like wildfire in St Thomas, people who knew him wandered from their homes, spilling onto street corners with disbelief and grief painted on their faces. more