By Petulia Clarke, Staff Reporter 
This is the third in a series of articles looking at crime and violence in Jamaica and its impact on the society. Part four will appear tomorrow.
AT 43, GRACE Christie knows the stuff nightmares are made of. Hers began early on the morning of July 25 this year.
"It was just a normal schoolday, I know I was sleeping when the phone rang because I had taken some tranquillisers the night before," she recalled.
The phone call that her 20-year-old son Rolando had been shot in the city's west end led her to nearby Kingston Public Hospital (KPH) with queries. When she didn't find him there, the housewife's first instinct was that he was dead.
"I then went to Collie Smith Drive, Trench Town, and there was my son, lying on the ground," she said.
Reports at that time were that young Rolando was on his way to school at the HEART Academy at Boys' Town when he was shot six times on Collie Smith Drive, Trench Town. Mrs Christie said that he was pronounced dead without a doctor present and taken to the morgue, after the body was left lying for over an hour before police responded.
"It's the worst nightmare that could ever happen to anyone," she said in an interview from her Blake Street, Central Kingston home, "in that particular area there happened to be a few people that lost their lives there recently, they (the police) had to know that the school was there and there wasn't even a jeep patrolling."
Her ordeal was made even harder as just three years before she'd lost her 20-year-old daughter to lupus.
"I was just getting over my daughter's death," she said. "As a mother it's very hard to cope. My son was a great lover of children and cats and he had the greatest respect for women. I always wanted to see as a mother the kind of woman that he'd marry and I didn't get to see that. When my daughter died I decided to find out about lupus, the cost and the cure, so I went to every health seminar there was, so at the time I was on this herbal tablet that helped me to deal with the emotions and my stress. At that time I had so much knowledge of herbs. Three months before Rolando died I'd lost a lot of weight, I'd got back my energy and was feeling so good..."
The worst part for her is probably remembering what a bright future Rolando would've had, had he not been in Trench Town at the wrong time.
"My son had a good life. His family wasn't rich, but he had a good, normal life. He had potential, he had a skill from he was a very small child. He was studying marketing and computers. He was a bright child. He had plans. Actually he saw his way, even though the system is not good, he saw his way in it. He had just gone to get his Learner's permit 20 days before, two weeks after he passed on he would have been working at Jamaica Public Service. He had this plan that he would buy me a house and then move on with his own life."
Today, the Christie family is trying its best to move on, though it's harder for some than others.
"I go out a lot," Mrs Christie said, "even if it's just to take the bus to Half-Way Tree, get a herbal lunch or drink and walk around a bit. 'Simply the Best', the Tina Turner song is my favourite, I am coping outside and in, I've tried to cleanse my system. I go to seminars and I go out more."
On the other hand her husband has lost tremendously. "He's taking it hard. He doesn't do repairs anymore (he was a technician). He's mostly out in the country, maybe if it wasn't for me he would have packed and gone back there to live," she said.
Mrs. Christie said that she's been made stronger by the incident, even finding it in her heart to forgive the killer.
"I forgive him for killing my son," she said. "Somebody (a woman) called me once to say that he (the killer) said he was sorry, he didn't know my son was a schoolboy and didn't know he wasn't from the area. I told the person that I will accept it when I hear it from his mouth. She said to give him some time."
"My greatest wish," she said, "is for those doing the act to understand that the ones that are left behind are the ones that hurt the most. Somebody has taken something from me that is precious, a mother's connection to her child is the most precious thing."
