EIGHTY-YEAR-OLD Goomatee Gocool had to endure a hard life during her younger years, but today she is a happy soul, enjoying a peaceful life on the beautiful island of Leguan, in the Essequibo River. Mrs. Gocool, mother to eleven, was born and raised at the ‘back part’ of the island in a village called Clairmont. She attended the Richmond Hill Primaty School and spent a few years thereafter she took up sewing.
Enjoying life in Leguan
After finishing school, Mrs. Gocool explained that she didn’t just want to hang around her home doing nothing, so she opted to attend ‘Ms. Paul’s’ sewing classes. Ms. Paul (now deceased) was a good sewing teacher, Mrs. Gocool recalled.
In fact, she was taught so well that she eventually managed to get a sewing business of her own going. Furthermore, she was competent enough to teach other young women sewiing. There was nothing Mrs. Gocool couldn’t sew; she even did wedding dresses at one point.
The sewing work definitely contributed to the home as Mrs. Gocool’s husband, the late Thakur Persaud was a rice cutter. “We were poor and had so many children to care for,” she recalled.
Mrs. Gocool spent 29 years with her husband before he died as a result of illness. By this time, the children had grown up and had all started to work. They didn’t want their mother to continue working and so opted to care for her.
Now is the best time
Mrs. Gocool said she is enjoying life now much more than in her young days. “Now we enjoying life. Long time bin ah hard time; been ah poor time. That was a bad time,” she relasted.
At the age of 60, she recalled how one of her daughters took her to Canada for six months. “At that time, I had better health so there I see lil life.”
“Me had a hard time in life with my husband because he used to drink a lot. So I had no good life with him. But my children were always there for me.”
Mrs. Gocool had a nervous breakdown in her younger years. She feels that it was due to the fact that she was having a baby almost every year but was hardly getting proper food and rest. At the time, too, she recalled how scarce birth control options were. And so having no good care, and having to deal with her husband at the same time, really took a toll on her health.
“Today, I’m still enjoying life even though I feel sick sometimes,” she said. She doesn’t have a specific health issue but she often gets a bad headache which she feels is as a result of the nervous breakdown she suffered in the past.
“Now, I don’t have to do anything. My children make sure my house is clean, my bills paid, I have food. They didn’t forget about me. And they do come and visit me,” Mrs. Gocool related.
She is now living with her last son and a grandson. Her children are Premnauth, Bowhani, Ganga, Jagdeo, Girley, Jaiwattie, Seeranie, Savitri, Lakeram, Dora and Raj. Over the last seven years, though, Mrs. Gocool has lost Ganga, Savitri and Jagdeo in death.
(By Telesha Ramnarine)