“My beautiful daughter, daddy’s last baby is gone.”
This was the lament of a distraught James Best after learning yesterday that his daughter Lynette Stoute, critically burnt over 83 per cent of her body, had died yesterday at a hospital in Panama.
On August 9, the 23-year-old mother rushed into their burning house at Diamond Valley, St Philip, apparently thinking her three children were trapped inside.
They were safe; and Shamyah, 5, Jayden 3 and Taleisha, 1, are now Best’s primary concern.
“Only mothers will do that; and Lynette was a good mother who loved her kids,” he told the MIDWEEK?NATION.
Best said the doctors in Panama were saying that she was going to completely recover.“I don’t know what went wrong along the way. She fought the good fight, but she lost the battle, and all we can do now is hope and pray.”Stoute was flown to Panama by air ambulance on August 14.Best said: “Last night [Monday] night I was in here and I couldn’t sleep. After 12 [midnight] I was pacing up and down, up and down. I even went out there, in the rain and said, ‘It feels good’. “I didn’t know that was the calling for my child,” he said.Best said when his children called him, he knew something was wrong. “I asked them if anything happened to the children [Stoute’s], and they said no.“I asked them if something happened to Lynette, and they said yes. I knew she was gone. Today [yesterday] is the hardest day of my life.”He said the children had not yet been told about their mother’s death. “We have to find the appropriate time and way to do it.Stoute’s mother Hazel Stoute-Best was sad and “hanging in there”, Best said. “I have to be strong. The Lord don’t put more on a man than he is able to bare. These are testing times, but we are a fighting family.”The grieving father said he was grateful to the doctors and nurses who tended his daughter during her stay in Intensive Care at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, and also to well-wishers who provided support to the family. He confirmed that Lynette’s body would be returned to Barbados for burial. Just two weeks before his 60th birthday, Best is crying out: “My life has just began. My life begun two seconds after that fire. I will takecare of Lynette’s children. They will be well looked after. My grandchildren will be well looked after.”
