George Lloyd is an old man. He marked his 91st birthday on October 1, but had little to celebrate.

Lloyd shares his Caribbean Terrace home with his 61-year-old daughter Olive Lloyd. In fact they both sleep in one room of their three-bedroom house.

The house is now just a bare concrete frame, with square open spaces where windows once were. And it has been like this for four months now, following Hurricane Ivan, which visited that sea-front area with waves of over 20 feet, on September 10.

If they want the use of a toilet, even if it is in the middle of the night, the Lloyds have to go next door. And that’s also where they also get their meals.

“The hurricane washed away our pit, so now we have to use next door,” says Olive.

So both have, in some ways, become wards of the community.

The hurricane also washed away the title for the property, so Lloyd who has lived at 41 Caribbean Terrace for 25 years now, will have difficulty proving his legitimacy.

According to Olive and other citizens, the home wasn’t the only thing terribly destroyed by the hurricane. They say that George now shows signs of senility with short term memory loss, and that his health is a common hindrance for himself and those around him.

“Since the Hurricane, he’s become senile. He can’t cope with the loss. Sometimes he would act as if he’s just seeing something for the first, even if it was always there,” says Olive.

“He doesn’t remember things that happened weeks ago, but he remembers when he was much younger. And this wasn’t so before the hurricane.”

And, even as Lloyd tells the Observer his story, his eyes look pre-occupied, distant and full of grief.

He tells of how the police had to lift him from his verandah, insisting even now that nothing would take him from his home.

“I live here for over 25 years now; I not giving up my house,” says Lloyd, standing to the side of the paint-free, door-less structure that looks nor feels nothing like a home.

He gives us a tour of the structure. There are appliances but none works – they were destroyed by the water.

But Lloyd still opens the defunct refrigerator and points to the rusty stove, perhaps out of a sense of loss more than anything else.

He shows the bathroom, which is unfit for use, the watermarked-walls and cracked floor.

The house is not-in living condition. And as Lloyd gives a tour of the empty house, his loss is clear.

But he explains: “Before the hurricane, right here was pretty grass (now it’s rabble), the rooms had furniture (now they’re empty) and the bathrooms worked.

Lloyd worked most of his life at the Caribbean Cement Company, saved his money and bought the house, only to lose it all – furniture, fixtures, plants, the title, and even his dentures, he says, showing his gum.

Says Patricia Smart, secretary of the Caribbean Terrace Action Committee:

“Mr Lloyd has deteriorated since the hurricane, because of the trauma of losing his home.”

– margaretl@jamaicaobserver.com