- NEWSDAY.CO.TT - A la Une - 26/Jun 18:40

A mother’s 55-year search for daughter who vanished

ODESSA Mayers has lived a life marked by heartbreak, loss, abuse and resilience. In an emotionally raw interview with Newsday, the 74-year-old mother of three opened up about her painful past and her decades-long search for a daughter she lost 55 years ago. Mayers was raised in Barataria by a woman she lovingly called “Aunt Nella,” a relative for whom she remains deeply grateful. By age 16, she was living with Aunt Nella and her mother in Laventille when she became pregnant for the first time. She gave birth to a son in 1968 at the Port of Spain General Hospital. Though her pregnancy was relatively easy, thanks in part to Aunt Nella’s guidance, the aftermath of her son’s birth remains a haunting mystery. “I was just 16 when I gave birth,” Mayers recalls. “The doctors mostly dealt with my mother because I was underage. After delivery, my mother took the baby – I never saw him again.” Clutching the faded birth paper that only bears the year of birth, the baby’s gender, and her own name, she recalled asking her mother for answers but getting none. “On her last (deathbed), she never said what happened to him,” Mayers said. “She took the truth with her.” Mayers believed the child had died until a friend told her the baby had not. Countless years later after she did her own investigation, she found her son in late 2024. “There’s a lot he doesn’t know, and he didn’t want to speak to me. He’s doing well, so I left it alone. He knows I’m his mother,” she said. Two years after the birth of her son, Mayers worked as a domestic helper, taking whatever jobs she could find. She began a courtship with a young man and spoke of that time with a shy blush. However, the relationship eventually became troubled, and Mayers found herself homeless, staying with a friend and her husband in Diego Martin during her second pregnancy. In 1970, she gave birth to a baby girl, again at the Port of Spain General Hospital. Though she was overjoyed by her daughter’s arrival, her circumstances were precarious. She produces another birth paper – this one, too, only lists the date and gender. Back then, she explains, it was not customary to name a child formally at birth. “You just took the baby home and called them whatever name you chose.” But the years have dulled her memory and near tears, she admitted that she could not remember what she called her daughter. When the infant fell ill at three months – Mayers took her to the hospital for care. She did not return to the hospital for about three days, a decision she now deeply regrets. “When I went back, she was gone. Nobody could give me a straight answer. They said nurses changed shifts, all kinds of stories… but she disappeared,” she says. “I live with the weight of that decision every day,” she adds. “It haunts me. I just want to know what happened to her. I want to find my child.” Yet tragedy was not done with Mayers. Two years later, she gave birth to her third and final child, a vibrant, ambitious girl she named Abigail. “This one (child), I held on to tight.” Mayers raised Abigail on her own in Belmont. But when Abigail was 16, she fell gravely ill, a turn Mayers attributes to negative peer influences. “She was a beautiful girl… very ambitious. But she became secretive. Then she started getting sick all the time. She was never a sickly child before,” Mayers says, her voice breaking. She recounts Abigail’s final days with heartbreaking clarity. “I had just started a job at the Twin Towers (Eric Williams Financial Complex),” she says. “That morning, I made tea for her, but she couldn’t even get out of bed. I had to go to work. When I came back, I carried her to the hospital.” Abigail was hospitalised for several days before she succumbed. “I visited her the day before she died. She said, ‘Mammy, I feeling cold.’ I asked the nurse if I could get in bed with her. She said yes. I think… she (the nurse) knew she was going to die.” Mayers lay beside her daughter, holding her close. The next day when she returned, Abigail’s bed was empty. “I knew then. I just knew,” she sobs, burying her face in her hands. “I didn’t have much. Someone gave me clothes and helped organise her funeral.” Today, Mayers lives in Belmont, tending to the small home she is trying to finish building – she also fusses about her missing black-and-white fluffy dog. "I know who has my dog," she says. But her deepest focus remains finding the daughter she lost in 1970. As the interview wound down, she leaned forward and whispered, “How much for yuh?”, a reminder of the day she first walked into Newsday’s office, desperate to place an ad in hopes someone, somewhere, might help her find answers. Newsday made contact with the Port of Spain General Hospital’s records department, but no documentation was found that could shed light on the 55-year-old mystery. Still, Mayers clings to hope. “I don’t know where she is. I’ll keep looking.” The post A mother’s 55-year search for daughter who vanished appeared first on Trinidad and Tobago Newsday.