CLARENDON, Jamaica — Micey Walters, the mother of two young children who perished in a house fire in Race Course earlier this year, is still struggling to accept the reality that she will have to move on without them. And even as she grieves the loss, she constantly blames herself for not taking them with her that fateful day, like she always does.

“From mi baby dem dead mi belly no stop hurt mi, a bare pain inna mi belly till sometime mi feel like me ago get off. It better mi did carry dem, better mi never lef mi baby dem with mi sister cause dem a walk a tell people say mi never left mi baby wid dem,” she agonised.

Walters said on the morning of Thursday, March 24, her children’s father made breakfast and then left for work a short distance away.

“It wasn’t much, so mi cook and finish and wash up back the plates and put out di fire and everything was good. My sister was cooking and when mi a leave mi left the door open and mi lock di gate and the baby dem never inna di house.”

What happened next she said was unimaginable and unexpected as she doesn’t see herself as a careless mother.

“When mi go drop off the food and a come back mi see her a run from in the yard a say fire! When mi run in the yard mi start look fi my two baby dem. When mi ask her son weh my baby dem deh, him say dem inna di house. When mi reach mi couldn’t do nothing more, but she coulda save dem. She not even bawl out fi help, she run out of the yard and say mi ago go prison and she naa come wid mi ‘cause a fimi pickney dem.”

Walters, who is epileptic and hypertensive, passed out at the scene of the fire and had to be rushed to the Lionel Town Hospital as the reality of losing her two youngest children began to set in.

“Mi no deserve dis, mi jovial to people, mi no cuss or make trouble. The day when the house burn down, people in the community tell the police that I never leave them with anybody, anywhere me a go me always carry them, and they don’t know what happened that day why I left them with my sister. Sometimes when I go to do days’ work I carry them, mi always make sure dem deh a mi foot. Mi naa tell you no lie, it rough bad. Mi no know weh dem ago do when me go back a court, mi a fret on it and, if anything, what will happen to my next child,” she said.

She is to return to court early next month.

According to Walters, life has not been the same and the relationship with her sister and mother has soured since, and she has had to be staying with her sister-in-law at a house not far from where the incident took place.

She says she is barely managing to cope since the incident, and up to the time of this interview, she had not received any counselling.

Even while she grapples to cope with the loss, the children’s father and sister are also struggling with the tragedy in their own way.

“My seven-year-old is not coping well, she not talking anything with sense, she keep saying her sister dem no dead. She say mummy mi sister dem get burn up and you not even a go hospital go look fi dem, and I don’t know how to tell her dem dead and naa come back,” she said.

The mother spent three nights in lock-up and was released on bail when she appeared in court.

Four-year-old Abigail and her three-year-old sister Kayla Tomlinson burned to death in the fire.