President Anthony Carmona was moved to tears on Thursday night, when a 34th birthday celebration and book launch for author and historian Angelo Bissessarsingh turned out to be a kind of final farewell for this cancer sufferer.
There were few dry eyes in the audience at the atrium of the Gulf City Mall, San Fernando, when Bissessarsingh, a Sunday Guardian columnist, shared with them his doctors’ advice, “to start packing up. It ain’t going to be long again.”
Bissessarsingh, who has been very candid about his battle with pancreatic cancer, said doctors had stood between him and death many times, but the prognosis following a CT scan done three weeks ago showed multiple organ failure and other ailments that cannot be counteracted.
“If, indeed, this is to be our last public appearance together, our last soiree together, I want to thank you. It has been a wonderful life. It has been a short life, but you have made it a very rich experience for me,” said Bissessarsingh who remained seated on the stage during his address.
Carmona, who immediately followed on the podium after Bissessarsingh’s address to make special remarks, tightly hugged the celebrant as he whispered words of encouragement in his ear and appeared reluctant to release him.
“How can you make special remarks to someone who is downright exceptional? What more can you say, what more can you do to engage in a type of celebration of a life that has been lived, one that we have hoped will continue to live and one that we are now being told is on the verge of being a life lived,” Carmona said.
The President, who said he and his wife Reema have been praying for Bissessarsingh’s healing, said he refused to believe ‘this is it.’ He vowed, “We will continue to pray hard and we will continue to invoke the power of God because as long as you sit, as long as you stand, we feel deep in our hearts anything is possible and we continue to pray for that miracle.”
He urged him not to give up.
“In fact I feel that tonight must not be some kind of plodding death march to a loss, a lost cause. I think this must be a road to eternal salvation and a road that would light up every step that you make. We must not give up.”
The night was full of surprises for Bissessarsingh at the launch of his book, Virtual Glimpses into the Past, as the committee overseeing his publications presented him with the first set of copies of another one of his books Pancho’s Dilemma.
Moved to tears and beyond words, Bissessarsingh said he did not know this was possible, since it was his desire to have two of his books, including Pancho’s Dilemma, published before pancreatic cancer got the better of him.
He thanked the committee members, including editor Judy Raymond, Professor Brinsley Samaroo, Francesca Hawkins, Simone De La Bastide and Geoffrey McLean, who he said stood by him through immense torture and suffering out of friendship and good will.
The committee also presented him with a birthday cake designed in the form of books, as well as a plaque from Raymond engraved with the words of Roman poet Horace, which Bissessarsingh said would go on his tombstone.