‘I cry every day and night’ - Daughter desperate to find 72-y-o mentally ill mother, missing for two months

For the past two months, the life of Nadia Morrison Anderson has been in turmoil, as she wonders where her 72-year-old mentally ill mother Esmie Holiday could be.

Morrison Anderson told The STAR that her mother was last seen leaving her home in Spring Gardens, St Thomas on May 7.

However, police reports stated that the elderly woman was last seen on May 28 wandering in her community wearing a black blouse, black tights, and had a yellow cloth wrapped around her head.

Described as self-sustainable in spite of having mental health challenges, Morrison Anderson said her mother lived alone for years.

"She's very intelligent, she's independent, she does everything for herself still. But when her head takes her, she will speak foolishness or quarrel with people in the town. But, otherwise, when she gets her injection, she stays at home and she's fine. She wash, she clean and everybody knows her," the worried daughter said.

Morrison Anderson explained that, despite her independence, she has made multiple attempts to get her mother to live with her in Clarendon, or at least to move into a care facility.

"If we go and stay with her, she runs us to our house. If we try to take her down here in Clarendon, she guh right back up because she seh she's independent," Morrison Anderson explained.

"I've even asked an infirmary up there [in St Thomas] if they could take her so I know that she's okay. But they are saying that they know her and they've talked to her and she will not leave her place. She's telling them that she has a house, she has her land, and she's not gonna leave it," she added.

TAKEN AT THREE YEARS OLD

Taken from her mother at age three years, mother and daughter reunited when Morrison Anderson was 32, and they formed an unbreakable bond.

"She might have mental problems but she is still my mother ... she birthed me and, from the time I know that she was the one who birthed me, I'm always interested in looking after her. I will continue to look after her in whatever way I can because she's alive and she a human being and I love her," Morrison Anderson said, adding that not knowing her mother's whereabouts is "terrible".

"I cry every day and night. I've been up there [St Thomas] and I search in every way. I show her picture to everybody, every church I ask for prayer, and I'm just not sleeping. I'm jumping out of my sleep in the nights and I'm crying every day at work," Morrison Anderson explained.

Anyone knowing the whereabouts of the elderly Esmie Holiday is asked to contact the Morant Bay police at 876-982-2233, police 119 emergency numbers or the nearest police s tation.