‘Grandfather coming!’: The man who lost the children who were his whole world

Every morning, Rajkumar Matabheek knew what to expect.

The sound of his footsteps on the concrete road outside his Bush Lot, West Coast Berbice home was enough to send three children racing to the front door of the upper flat.

“Grandfather coming! Grandfather coming!” they would shout, calling to their mother, who was usually downstairs cooking, to let them out.

For Rajkumar, those moments defined his life.

His grandchildren – eight-year-old Nathaniel Jr., five-year-old Natalia and three-year-old Ezekiel – were his whole world.

Now he stares silently at the ground, trying to comprehend how life goes on without them.

The three children and their mother, Rachel Wells, were among those who died when the MV Barima sank off Guyana’s coast last Saturday.

They were travelling with Rachel’s husband, Nathaniel – Rajkumar’s son – to Smith Creek in the North West District, where Rachel was returning for the first time in nine years. Nathaniel’s brother, Adam, and Adam’s wife, Carlita, were also on board. The three of them survived.

As the family prepares to bury Rachel and the children today, Rajkumar speaks quietly about the grandchildren whose laughter and mischief once filled every corner of his life.

“How I feel?” he says after a long pause. “Can’t explain that. Real sad.”

The children rarely let him out of their sight.

“They paste on me, like they were made on me,” he says with a faint smile, remembering their closeness.

If he had a piece of cake, they expected to share it. If he was eating, Natalia would quietly appear beside him, hoping for a taste. If it was noodles, he laughs briefly, “it was all over.” They were her favourite.

“Me and them were so close,” he says. “Sometimes I sit alone and remember certain things.”

The memories are constant.

He says that when he lies in his hammock and closes his eyes, he can almost see them again.

“When I relax in the hammock and close my eyes, it’s like I can see them.”

Other memories are simply too painful.

He has not gone to the funeral parlour.

“I can’t go,” he says. “I really don’t want to watch them.”

A large canvas displaying photographs of Rachel and the children now stands at the family home. Rajkumar walks past it, unable to look.

“I can’t watch the photo.”

Most nights, he and his wife sleep at the home of an elderly relative to keep her company before returning home in the morning.

Every day, as soon as the children heard his shoes striking the concrete road, they knew he was coming. They would rush to the door, desperate to get outside before he reached the house.

Among all his memories, one now haunts him most.

The children always kissed him goodbye before leaving. Nathaniel Jr. usually gave him a quick kiss and hurried off.

But in the days before the trip, something changed.

“He started kissing and hugging me tight.”

Looking back, Rajkumar cannot shake the feeling that something was different.

“When the thing happened… that was a change. Something wrong deh.”

The family had been travelling so Rachel could return to the village where she was born and raised. Years earlier, she had travelled to a church convention, where she met Nathaniel. They married, settled on the West Coast of Berbice and raised their three children together.

Now, alongside his own grief, Rajkumar worries about the son who has lost his wife and all three of his children.

“I will have to comfort Nathaniel,” he says.

It is a burden no parent expects to bear.

Rajkumar knows there is no quick recovery from a loss like this.

“Me and them just link up,” he says quietly. “I don’t know how long it will take to recover this.”

For now, he is left with memories — of little hands reaching for cake, of children climbing into his hammock, and of three excited voices racing to the door every time they heard his footsteps.

“Grandfather coming!” they would shout.

Those words have fallen silent.

But for Rajkumar Matabheek, they will echo for the rest of his life.