Moving service for Grange Hill nurse and daughters
SAVANNA-LA-MAR, Westmoreland – Tears flowed freely inside the Mannings High School auditorium during yesterday’s funeral service for nurse Carol Waldron and her two daughters, Kadijah and Ashley.
Two weeks ago, the 41-year-old nurse reportedly fatally injected Kadijah, a Mannings High School 10th grader, and three-month-old Ashley, before slashing her own wrists at a small hotel in Montego Bay.
News of the deaths rocked the Grange Hill, Westmoreland, community where the three lived with Waldron’s parents, James and Lena Clayton.
During yesterday’s gloomy thanksgiving service, there were tributes from sombre-faced nurses assigned to the Savanna-La-Mar Hospital where Waldron used to practise; and from students attending Kadijah’s alma mater, Mannings High.
Family members wept openly during the service.
Tears ran down the faces of the Westmoreland students during the reading of the remembrance for Kadijah, and later when they blended their voices in song.
A teary-eyed family member, Gavin Edmond, who described Carol as ” loving, pleasant, kind and spirited”, fought unsuccessfully to choke back the tears during his reading of the eulogy.
But the most touching moments were reserved for Carol’s devastated father, James Clayton who could not contain himself during the final stages of the service. He left his seat, used a piece of white cloth to wipe the two coffins – one containing his daughter and her three-months-old daughter and the other bearing his “favourite” granddaughter, Kadijah.
The distraught Clayton removed his daughter’s nurse cap, which was positioned on the top of her coffin. He briefly placed it on his head.
Clayton then clutched both coffins as he led the pall bearers from the church to the two waiting hearses.
Meanwhile, Reverend Father Hartley Perrin, who during his sermon sought to assuage the mourners, lashed out at critics who dared to “condemn or judge” the nurse who was said to have been experiencing marital problems prior to her death.
“This is a scene from which a best seller could be written. A scene from a strange drama with a twist. If somehow we would wish that we were only in a dream. A critical care nurse… her children. What is remarkable (is that) we won’t get a clear answer,” Perrin said.
He continued: “Some persons will say this is one funeral I would never attend. There are those who stand as if God has given them the power to stand and be judge. We have to become careful that we do not become judges. We cannot understand until we have walked a mile in the other person’s shoe.”
Meanwhile, widower Michael Waldron, was noticeably absent from his wife’s and daughters’ thanksgiving service.
A Sunday Observer source disclosed that the embattled widower did not turn up due to security concerns.