GRIEF is a tricky and difficult process. For widows, it is no different. The feeling of losing the love of your life can make you feel hopeless and helpless.

Understanding this and the emotions involved from their personal experiences, Soraya Nanan and Ann Marie Hassanali extend their support to others at the helm of local NGO Widow Support TT.

Nanan founded the NGO around 2014, but the idea first came to her in 2009 after she lost her husband, Lincoln Nanan. They were both attorneys,

and she said they were a dynamic duo in the legal profession.

But in 2007, he was diagnosed with leukaemia and went to the US for treatment.

Despite remaining in TT, she kept her husband, her best friend, updated on her personal life and career.

“Every time I finished a matter, I would call him while walking back to my (San Fernando) office and we would just touch base. That was my routine,” she told WMN.

Eventually, the cancer went into remission (the symptoms decreased/disappeared) and he returned to TT. But the cancer later resurfaced and he was admitted to the Eric Williams Medical Sciences Complex in Mt Hope.

“On January 14, 2009, I visited him in hospital. The nurses told me he wasn’t taking his medication. So I said, ‘Lincoln,’ and as he heard my voice, he started to (react). I gave him the tablets and he took his water, but then I just kept hearing gurgling.

“I just got frightened because I did not know what was going on, so, I ran outside, called the nurse, the nurse called the doctors…”

Her mind immediately flashed to their then-one-year-old daughter.

“I grabbed on to one of the doctors and said, ‘Do not let me go home and tell my daughter that her father isn’t coming home.’”

After sighing deeply, she continued, “I saw the doctors walking back out after a while and I saw one of them walking to me. From the time I saw the look on their face, I knew that was it, and I started bawling.

“I can't remember how long I stayed there. I just didn't want to let go of him. We didn’t get our happily ever after.”

She was 34 at the time, and he was 35. They had been together for ten years and married for two.

She recalled the horrors of trying to manage her emotions. She felt no one else around her understood, as they had never endured anything similar.

“I had to figure out how to take care of this little baby as well as navigate through my grief.|

“I was dealing with grief to the point where I remember just lying in bed, didn't want to bathe, didn't want to brush my teeth. It was like a deep depression I was in.”

Having become the sole breadwinner, she said she forced herself to go back out to work.

“Clients were calling, they were wondering what's happening with their matters.”

She said the denial stage of grief presented itself in the form of her pretending to still call her husband after every case to update him.

[caption id="attachment_1123967" align="alignnone" width="575"] Soraya Nanan, founder of Widow Support TT, at her San Fernando office on November 27. - Photo by Lincoln Holder[/captio