Every day, Stella McKenzie looks out longingly to the road in front her house feeling she would see her son, Oren McKenzie, coming home.
“When I see him, I will just hug him and tell him I love him. I will not argue with him,” she said, weeping. I just want him to come home.”
Oren, 28, left their Gran Couva home on June 14, 2014, saying he was going to shop in Couva but he never returned.
McKenzie said shortly before he left home, Oren’s father, Ben McKenzie, had a stern talk with him about becoming more responsible. She is not sure whether their only child left home to be on his own or what.
“He told me he was coming back to help me cook and planned to visit his three-year old son in Piparo the next day, which was Father’s Day.
“Apart from his ID and driver’s permit, which he had on him, he left his passport and all other documents and personal belongings at home.
McKenzie’s grief over her son’s sudden and strange disappearance intensified when her husband, Ben, 57, died on February 22 earlier this year from “worries over Oren”.
“He loved him very much. He always used to be looking out the road for Oren. Before he died, he told me he cried every night for Oren.
“He would stay up sometimes until 2 am, 3 am and stand by the gate and look out. Christmas, birthdays, we never slept. We always looked out, feeling we could see him walking in.”
McKenzie said not knowing anything about Oren is what took a toll on her husband and what also is disturbing her.
“I don’t want to go like Ben, not knowing. If Oren could just call and say he wants to live by himself, I would be at peace.”
McKenzie, 59, who once ran the popular Stella’s Bar in the village, bursts into tears whenever she starts talking about her son and deceased husband.
“It’s really hard,” she says.
However, in the midst of her intense pain and sorrow, have come amazing occurrences that keep her going. McKenzie, who had suffered a stroke even while her son was at home and was unable to speak properly and was sickly, regained almost perfect speech after her husband died.
“I used to get a lot of pain in one of my feet every day and could hardly walk. The pain has now vanished and I am getting up and going out and doing my own errands,” she says.
She believes the merciful hand of God is upon her and said she now has a new connection with Him. She is even willing to lend support to others whose children went missing.
As for her constant tears, she said: “The tears will flow and flow. But they also dry up. Telling of the nightmare that began when her son disappeared, she said people told her they saw him in the country up until December last year.
“A friend told me she saw him in at Lowlands Mall in Tobago and he turned around and went back outside when he saw her. I don’t know why he is doing what he is doing.”
She said a La Cuevas vendor also told her she saw Oren there a few months after he left home and even spoke to him.
“She said she asked him where his daddy was and he said he was not with daddy today, he was with friends. Ben and Oren used to go regularly to Las Cuevas to bathe.”
McKenzie said she and Ben drove all over Trinidad looking for their son and put up over 1,000 posters.
The police reportedly told her Oren was a big man and could do what he wanted and have put his matter in the “cold case” files, she said.