Sumintra Jittan

Sumintra Jittan, last residing in Orlando, Florida, passed away on September 2, 2023 of heart failure, at the age of 87. She was known to many as Dholl, but for most of us we knew her as Mom Mom - and what a fitting title it was. There is not enough time nor words to describe the woman that she was and the lives that she’d touched, but my best description is the good times she showed us how to have. The way she laughed, and especially the way she loved to dance. I can speak for every single person when I say “my grandma knew how to have a good time”. She didn’t even want her funeral to be boring because she wish for as long as I can remember was to eat, drink plenty, dance, and party, the one and only rule was to don’t eat no meat by the house.

You know, I would have never imagined I would have been the one granted the opportunity to write her final goodbyes, not because I wasn’t her favorite, but because I thought, actually we all thought - she would live forever! And what more fitting situation than that of a grandchild, because she loved her grandchildren so much. You see, although what the world saw as a fun, entertaining, happy and loving person… we knew what a miraculous woman she was. We knew singlehandedly the trials that she faced when her late husband passed away, and how she worked and worked and worked to ensure her children and grandchildren will have a better future. See my grandma made sure she brought us to the states and no matter what. She made sure we had what we needed. She didn’t care if it was one chocolate, but she made sure we each got a piece, and of course, there were size differences, but we all had some.

Although I can tell you countless memories of the good things and the good times we had with her, I wanted to conclude with my personal favorite memory of her. I could remember when she would come to visit, I was excited to see what present she was bringing. I remember she would always tell me “I have something for you yuh know” and then she would smile and pull out a bounty from her pocket and meticulously unwrap it to reveal its contents. She would smile and then say “yuh like it”, and then scoot my face closer to give me a kiss. But I cannot stop at that, because if you knew my grams, the next words would be “you go take a lil drink with meh, not a big one you know, just a lil one.”

This was the same smiles I remembered when we were back at home in Trinidad, when she would send down a barrel with everything you could possibly imagine, and she would come and distribute it just to see the smiles our faces. The clothes would be folded just like that little napkin in her pocket, and she would unravel them piece by piece as if she had spent the entire year picking that especially for you. The clothes smelled so good, we thought America had factories of chocolates and streets of gold, because she made sure we had it all. She loved her family, she might not have liked us equally, but she did love each of us uniquely.

Today is indeed a sad day, the world has lost a warrior, brothers have lost a sister, children have lost a mother, nieces and nephews have lost an aunt, people have lost a friend, our family has lost its leader, we have lost our Mom Mom. But I conclude my speech not by saying goodbye, because that wouldn’t be right for the amazing woman we all knew. I will end by saying “Mom Mom, love you, I will celebrate you, I go dance for you, I will sing for you, UNTIL WE RAISE A GLASS AND CHEERS AGAIN!