By LEANDRA ROLLE

Tribune Staff Reporter

lrolle@tribunemedia.net

A year ago, Carline Edgecombe’s worst fears came true when her only two daughters were taken from her after Hurricane Dorian destroyed the church in which they had sought shelter with their father.

Hours before the storm hit, Mrs Edgecome said she remembered telling her eldest daughter to never let her younger sister out of her sight no matter what happened, only to find out later that they died in each other’s arms.

“All parents look at their children like if something happens to them, how would you react? That was my worst fear for them and it actually came true,” the Abaco mother recalled.

Mrs Edgecombe said it seems like yesterday when her youngest daughter, Myeisha Edgecombe, had fought to be with her father to ride out the Category Five storm, a battle in which she eventually won.

“She said ‘I want to go to daddy, mummy’ and I said ‘Myesha, you hurt my heart’ because my heart broke when she said that and I said anyway ‘If that’s what you want, so be it.’”

Mrs Edgecombe said she did not know that the day she carried them to their father, it would be the last time she laid eyes on her two young girls.

Jendayia Edgecome, 17, and Myeisha, eight, were never seen alive again after the roof of a local church in which they had sought shelter collapsed.

“The last time I saw them was August 31,” she told The Tribune yesterday. “That was the last time I saw them. I didn’t see them the next day because I spoke to them on the phone but I didn’t see them.

“Their last words was that same day when the storm came, that same Sunday. I saw them the 31st around 7pm to 8pm. Actually my oldest daughter sent me a picture of a police (officer) who was in a car accident and that’s when she told me ‘mummy, do you know this person?’

“I said, ‘yeah I know (him)’, and she said ‘he just was in a car accident and he just died’ and I was like ‘oh, that’s so sad’. That same Sunday she showed me the guy (who had died), and she was like ‘mommy he crashed’ and she literally didn’t know that that day was her last day too.

“I told her to make sure to keep (the) little one close to her. I said no matter what, don’t let the baby go. She says ‘yes mommy, I know how you go with your baby. I get her.’ She calls her ‘lil monkey’ and she said ‘Don’t worry, I got your lil monkey.’”

Mrs Edgcombe said while she never saw their bodies, locals told her they found the two girls holding each other’s arms as they drifted near the church.

She believes their fate had come to her youngest daughter in a dream.

“My young one did dream about that and the dream came exactly how she told me,” she recalled. “She dreamed that they did float away. She said ‘Mummy, I dream Abaco was full of water and I was floating away.’

“She said ‘we was floating away. Me and my sister was floating away.’ And I said ‘where mummy and daddy was?’ and she said ‘y’all gone y’all separate ways and I was crying for you mummy, I was crying that I want my mummy’ and the oldest one say ‘don’t worry Myeisha, they going to find us.’”

A year after the monster storm took her precious daughters, Mrs Edgecombe said she plans to go to the beach today to seek solace.

“I’m going to try to go somewhere far. If I could go by the beach just to be out of it,” she said.

Mrs Edgecombe told The Tribune trying to cope with life and find closure after Dorian has not been an easy pill to swallow.

However, she credits her faith in God for helping her to weather one the most difficult storms in her life.

“With Christ in the vessel I can smile at the storm and I’m still smiling through my storm and through my pain because I have Christ in my vessel with me. It’s okay.”

She also said she plans to honour her daughters by creating a foundation in Abaco for orphans.

“Right now, I’m trying to ask God to open up a foundation for children,” she said. “Children who don’t have no parents. That’s my wish. . .”

Dorian hit Abaco on September 1, 2019, as a Category Five storm. The storm’s official death toll is 74, however many more people remain missing.