FULL STORY:Mum feeling better now

CORLETA HACKETT had plans to go into Bridgetown on Saturday and buy clothes  for her son Akeem’s 18th birthday.
But as fate would have it, she now has to choose  a suit for his burial.
And instead of wishing him happy birthday yesterday, in tears, supported by family members, the grieving mother identified the body of her first son which  was discovered  on a Christ Church beach yesterday morning.
Clad in a pair of pants, the body was discovered  in the surf at the southern end of Long Beach by a patrol from the Barbados Defence Force (BDF) around 5:40 a.m.
Akeem, who was the youngest fishing with six friends from Joe’s River Tenantry, St Joseph, reportedly fell off a cliff at Paragon, Christ Church, into the sea after suffering a seizure on Monday night.
Speaking to the DAILY NATION yesterday afternoon, after receiving counselling, a composed Corleta stated: “I feel a lot better today, knowing that they found the body.
It lifted a little weight off my shoulders.
“It was really hard this morning having to identify the body. The hardest part was before the officers got to me to tell me that they found the body. I heard it over the radio,” she said.
The 33-year-old recalled the experience of arriving on the scene with a heavy heart: “I see the body bags and my foot just give out. And one of the officers told me that I have to see the body first because I don’t know if it was him.
As they pulled the zip of the body bag I knew it was him.”
The mother, who was in the bath when her son told her he was going fishing, said handling his death was going to be rough, but added she had to be strong for his siblings.
As for how the former Parkinson Memorial Secondary student’s siblings were handling his death, the mother said: “My 15-year-old daughter is taking it the hardest, I guess because she is older. My son after her is angry and showing aggression. The other two don’t really understand,” she said.
“He was a nice boy, a bit rude when he ready; give some trouble at school. But these days he was changing.
He use to come through the door and say, ‘Mum, you know that I real sweet, you know your first son real sweet? Come let me give you a kiss’,” she recalled.