Trinidad: Couple marries at Grande hospital after crash spoils wedding plans

 (Trinidad Guardian) A near-fa­tal ac­ci­dent three weeks be­fore their wed­ding al­most de­railed the plans of a San­gre Grande cou­ple.

Basha Cain, 29, had planned to mar­ry her com­mon-law hus­band, Sean Cain, 45, in a cer­e­mo­ny at the Open Bible Church in San­gre Grande on Box­ing Day. In­stead, they ex­changed vows at Sean’s bed­side in the San­gre Grande Hos­pi­tal on that day.

The cou­ple has been to­geth­er for ap­prox­i­mate­ly 15 years and have two chil­dren, five-year-old Azari­ah and 18-month-old Jah­son. Ear­li­er this year, they said they de­cid­ed it was time to do the right thing for their chil­dren by ty­ing the knot.

But on De­cem­ber 7, Basha and Sean were in a friend’s maxi taxi re­turn­ing to San­gre Grande from a beach lime in To­co when the ve­hi­cle spun out of con­trol, hit a nar­row bridge and split in half.

Basha was un­hurt but when she was able to ex­tri­cate her­self from the wreck­age, she re­alised her fi­ance was pinned in­side the ve­hi­cle with a piece of the ve­hi­cle’s muf­fler pro­trud­ing from his left leg.

As she held his hand and watched him bleed­ing the road­way, Basha re­called see­ing one of her wed­ding in­vi­ta­tions scat­tered amongst the de­bris.

“I wasn’t sure if he would make it, he was bleed­ing so much. I re­mem­ber be­ing so scared and then I looked down and saw the in­vi­ta­tion just ly­ing on the road, with all the pieces of the ve­hi­cle and garbage…and I was think­ing, ‘This is where my wed­ding reach.”

“I couldn’t be­lieve things had got­ten so bad so fast,” she re­called.

Fire of­fi­cers from San­gre Grande had to cut Sean out of the wreck­age and he was tak­en to the hos­pi­tal with the muf­fler still in his leg. He was sta­bilised af­ter hours of emer­gency surgery and re­mains ward­ed at the hos­pi­tal await­ing an­oth­er surgery to have a piece of steel rod in­sert­ed in his leg so he can walk again.

In the first few days af­ter the ac­ci­dent, Basha said she was op­ti­mistic that Sean would be re­leased in time for their nup­tials but as time wore on, it be­came ap­par­ent that things would not go ac­cord­ing to plan.

“It was like every­where we turned there was some­thing else in our way. We didn’t know what to do and I called Pas­tor Brid­get Fletch­er from the church and I was cry­ing on the phone and she said, “Don’t wor­ry, the church is with you and Sean,” Basha said.

Sean, who ad­mit­ted he did not lead the best life be­fore the ac­ci­dent, said his con­fine­ment to the hos­pi­tal bed opened his eyes to many truths.

“I was ly­ing here, read­ing Psalms from a tablet when I start­ed to think about the kind of life I was liv­ing, the drink­ing, smok­ing, lim­ing all over and I broke down and cried,” he said.

“All the peo­ple I thought were my friends nev­er came to see me- even though all of them had been in­vit­ed to my wed­ding and had promised to come.”

Sean said Pas­tor Fletch­er be­came a life­line for him and Basha as the days went on, lead­ing to their de­ci­sion to con­tin­ue with their wed­ding plans.

“With the coun­selling and prayer, we de­cid­ed to do the wed­ding right here in the hos­pi­tal,” he said.

Basha said she bought a cheap­er wed­ding dress than the one her moth­er-in-law had bought for her in the Unit­ed States and Sean wore a shirt with a bow-tie.

“We said no mat­ter what, we were not go­ing to give in to the dev­il and give up on each oth­er. We got mar­ried right here by this bed and we couldn’t be hap­pi­er,” she said with a smile.

Since the ac­ci­dent, Basha has been work­ing three times as hard to en­sure her fam­i­ly can sur­vive the ex­pe­ri­ence. She is em­ployed as a re­lief main­te­nance work­er at the hos­pi­tal. Be­fore the ac­ci­dent, Sean cleaned and main­tained the Par­ry Recre­ation Ground and its fa­cil­i­ties.

De­ter­mined that her hus­band will not lose his job, Basha is fill­ing in for him.

“I come in every day at 5 am to clean him up and bathe him and then I start my job for the day. When I’m done here, I go to the ground and I do his job. Then I go home, cook and bring back food for him be­fore go­ing back to take care of the chil­dren,” she said.

De­spite her hec­tic sched­ule, the new­ly­weds still find time to share meals to­geth­er and they cred­it all their hap­pi­ness to their new­found love of Je­sus.

“I nev­er used to even go to church. I used to tell Basha when­ev­er she go­ing that she would rep­re­sent both of us,” Sean ad­mit­ted. “But now I can’t wait to go. Je­sus saved me and opened my eyes to the wrong that I was do­ing, He has made me a bet­ter man for my fam­i­ly.”

Basha said when­ev­er Sean is dis­charged from the hos­pi­tal, they will plan a cel­e­bra­tion at the church.

“We want to do things dif­fer­ent­ly this time and spend our wed­ding cel­e­bra­tion with our church fam­i­ly,” she said.