REMARKS BY THE HON. FRED MITCHELL
MINISTER OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS & THE PUBLIC SERVICE

THE UNIVERSITY OF THE NORTHERN CARIBBEAN

MANDEVILLE, JAMAICA

MEMORIAL SERVICE FOR THE LATE

JOSEPH DARIUS BURROWS, 22 YEARS OLD

14^th November 2004 

On occasions such as these, you don’t know what to say.  On occasions such as these, you nevertheless search for something profound to say, but there is nothing that I can say that is so profound that it will ease the overwhelming sorrow of this occasion.  This is not a happy time.  It is an occasion that I would rather have not come.  Yet it has come, and it is an honour for me to represent our Prime Minister the Rt. Hon. Perry Christie, the Government and the people of The Bahamas on this occasion. 

As I ruminated over what I would say, I was forced to recollect that it was only a few short weeks ago that I came to this campus to meet with the Bahamian students here and with the officials of the University.  It was largely a joyous and pleasing occasion.  There was so much hope, excitement, expectation and laughter.  Now we are here for an occasion that is filled with such overwhelming sadness. 

John Keats, the poet who wrote Ode to a Nightingale, died when he was 24 years old.  In his age, the disease of the time was tuberculosis.  He wrote the poem, which contrasts the great beauty of life with what he called “the weariness, the fever and the fret”. 

Our Bibles put it in another way: in the midst of life there is death.  In fact, one of the great questions of the ages is: why is there evil in the world? Job faces this dilemma, the great dichotomy of life, that is at once beautiful and full of hope and expectation, yet at the same time a monument to despair.  His answer: the Lord gives, the Lord takes away.  Blessed be the name of Lord! 

And when you think of it, what other explanation can there be?  For the psalmist says: “we spend our years as a tale that is told.”   

Those lines come from Psalm 90, known as the prayer of Moses. It is the psalm from which we get the lines: “The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore, yet is their strength Labour and sorrow, for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.” 

Many of us, mistakenly in my view, come to believe that we are promised to be here 70 years.  But if you look at the construction of the language you will see that the psalmist is only describing what the normal situation is.  Most times we live to be 70, and sometimes 80 but the psalmist also says of the lives of men: “they are like grass which groweth up.  In the morning, it flourisheth, and groweth up; in the evening it is cut down and withereth.” 

The Prime Minister of The Bahamas, our Government and people would wish me to extend to the family of the late Joseph Darius Burrows our heartfelt condolences on his passing. 

Those of you who are his contemporaries, in your teens and early twenties, will come to understand how life is filled with great joy and sorrow, all at one and the same time, and come to see this overwhelming loss as part of the larger picture.  The lesson in this sad event is that we must live our lives at all times to help our fellow men and women, for our life is like that of the grass. 

There is no one to blame for this and it is not productive to say what if. We believe that the perpetrators will be found, and we have been assured by the Government of Jamaica that everything will be done to find out who did this. They are no doubt evil persons, and their individual evils must not go unpunished. Our countrymen are naturally concerned about the safety of our young people in Jamaica but the answer is in part that there are threats to personal safety and security everywhere that you go.  We must all resort to being more careful and vigilant where we can and become even more our brother and our sister’s keeper. Stick closer to one another.  The Government will do what it can to address any other concerns. 

My brother Stephen, no one can know the trouble that you feel. But please be assured that an entire nation is behind you and is with you and your family at this time.  And we shall continue to pray for you, your family, your son’s widow and his daughter.