Holiday heartbreak - Cop who bravely battled sinus cancer passes on Christmas Eve

While many families across the island were indulging in food, drinks, music and fun on Christmas Eve, 24-year-old Renecia Raymond was breaking down after receiving the call she had been dreading.

"I told her I was coming to spend Christmas with her and then she passed," she said. Her mother, Detective Corporal Avarine Morris, died on December 24, after a long, painful battle with sinus cancer -- a fight THE STAR had followed since March 2024, when she appealed for help to travel to Mexico for treatment.

"She died on the 24th, the day before I was supposed to see her and spend the whole day with her. I did not even bother to do anything on Christmas Day. Right now I'm in bed and I've not left the house in days because this is depressing," she said. Morris did make the trip overseas and was clinging to hope.

"She went to Mexico March 2024 and came back June 2024. We were there for four months where she got treatment but didn't work as much as the doctor wanted it to. The tumour did not shrink as much," she said.

"They said we could try other treatments but we didn't have the money to do other treatments because it was expensive from the get-go for the one that they tried. So we just decided to come back to Jamaica and try find other alternatives." Raymond said that the disappointment was crushing for her mother.

"When we came back, the doctors said they would try and help her but it was too much. She only went to doctors and other places to try and control the pain. It was just pain management," she said.

"She was still hopeful [and] optimistic. She said she wasn't going to give up. She had a 'not giving up' spirit. She really fought, but the pain and everything else was too much."

Between November and December of this year, Raymond said that Morris was in and out of hospitals as her condition worsened.

"She was at UHWI (University Hospital of the West Indies) for about a week, then two days after she went to KPH (Kingston Public Hospital) for two weeks. After that she was transferred to Hope Institute for over two weeks. They do palliative care for critically ill cancer patients," she said.

"It was extremely stressing and depressing, to be very honest. She was in the hospital for over a month. I was trying to get a nurse for her to stay at home but I could not find a nurse, so she stayed in the hospital until her last days."

Raymond last saw her mother just days before she died.

"She passed the Wednesday and I saw her the Sunday. She was still very optimistic. I told her I was going to come and spend Christmas with her," she recalled. But several factors delayed her visit.

"I did not get to go before Christmas Eve because of the traffic with Grand Market and work, but I was expecting to spend the whole day with her when I got the call," she said.

Now, the plans she once made with hope have turned into preparations she never imagined making so soon as an only child.

"I am going to go to the hospital for her death certificate and then I'm going to try my very best to start funeral arrangements," she said. For Raymond, the season of joy has been replaced with sadness.

"There is no more Christmas without her."