Sorrow and hope: Shadica Dublin struggles to move forward after her child’s death

December 13, 2017 is a day that will remain etched forever in the mind of 22-year-old Shadica Dublin. It is the day she pulled out the body of her 17-month-old daughter Amya Eastman from a muddy trench in front of her Mocha Arcadia home following hours of a frantic search for the child who had gone missing.

“The police was there and they was like telling me how to look for her in the trench and then I tell them I find she and he tell me bring she up and I just bring she up and I look at she in she diaper and was like she was looking at me and then I couldn’t remember anything else,” the grieving mother told the Sunday Stabroek recently.

As a single parent, she was out working as a domestic and had left her three children aged 17 months and three and five years old at home in the care of an adult. The family lived in a small one-bedroom home in a yard surrounded by relatives of the children’s father. He no longer lives with his family, but Dublin said they have “a good communication” and he helps to support them even though she refers to herself as a single parent and added that “life can really be hard.”