Jeridah Andayi opens up on dealing with grief after death of daughter

Veteran Radio Citizen journalist Jeridah Andayi has opened up about dealing with the unexpected loss of her second born daughter.

Speaking on Citizen Digital's Behind the Mic show, Andayi chronicled how she watched her daughter die after a trip to the doctor turned  fatal owing to a road accident.

It was in 2008 and Andayi was in her fourth year of employment at Royal Media Services when she got word that her daughter had suddenly fallen ill.

Like any caring mother, Andayi quickly rushed to her daughter's side and ferried her to hospital where a doctor advised that the infant needed to be admitted for monitoring.

"On our way to the hospital, the ambulance we were riding in got involved in a head-on-collision with another vehicle.  I was holding my daughter at the time and she slipped and hit the vehicle's sides but didn't fall from my grasp. I didn't think about it much at the time since my girl was sleeping but I later realised that the impact of the accident had done a number on her," she told show host Cynthia Mwangi.

"There was a hospital attendant who was sitting at the back of the ambulance with us and he quickly got off to see what exactly was going on. He then came back, looked at my daughter and signaled the ambulance's driver that we needed to leave immediately. All this time the ambulance's driver was arguing with the driver of the vehicle we rammed into. It all happened so fast but by the time we got to hospital my child was technically dead."

For almost an hour, doctors tried to resuscitate the girl as Emergency Room (ER) attendants did everything in their power to bar Andayi from accessing the room.

"I tried to get in the ER but the doctor refused and I kept trying until they finally let me in. The doctor asked for the child's father, who was not there at the time but joined me later before telling us that our daughter was technically a cabbage," she said.

The doctor advised the young couple to either put their daughter on life support or let her go since she was brain dead but Andayi and her husband didn't give up.

"Everyone said we put her in ICU and we did and she stayed in there for seven days and I watched my daughter die slowly in those seven days," she said

"At some point, the hospital offered me a cousellor to talk to but I refused even though the pain of seeing my bed-ridden child was unbearable."

On the seventh day of her daughter's admission in hospital, doctors beckoned Andayi and her husband to enter the consultation room for an update on her daughter's progress.

"There were like 8 doctors and each of them was giving their report and they said there was not much they could do at the time noting that even the life support machines were not making my daughter any better," she said.

Andayi proceeded to ask one of the doctors what he would do if he were in her position and he advised her to allow the hospital to turn off the life-support machines.

"You can keep her here forever but she will not live, her brain is dead, her heart is not beating as it should be, her body temperature is dropping by the minute and her kidneys have already failed," she said as she remembered the words of the doctor.

"We thought about it and finally agreed to switch off the machines."

Despite finally agreeing to let her daughter go, Andayi says it was difficult for her to move on especially since her son was not old enough to understand the concept of death and kept asking for his sister at every possible opportunity.

"When my daughter died my son was four, at that age he was still not able to understand what was happening and I remember the next morning after my daughter's funeral my son woke up and asked for his sister," she said.

"I had told my son that his sister had gone to heaven to be with Jesus but he asked why we buried her in the ground if she was supposed to go be with angels. He even wanted to see if there was a hole on the grave which he thought my daughter used to climb out of the grave when she went to be with God."

Andayi would spend more time with her son owing to fears that something bad would happen to him if she was not by his side.

Working also proved difficult for the veteran Radio journalist who at times felt overwhelmed in studio when she played songs that reminded her of her daughter, especially when she was hosting the shows alone.

"At the time, I was co-hosting a show with Joyce Gituru who was there with me ever since I learned I was pregnant.  She could feel my pain but I didn't talk about it and she had no other choice but to respect that," she said.

"I was fine when co-hosting the show but it became a problem when I was alone. I could play a song which reminded me of my daughter and I would start crying in studio."

The events that led to her daughter's death remain fresh in Andayi's mind.

"The most difficult thing about me losing my child is that I am not sure if I did everything to save her life. Sometimes I feel like did I fail my own child. If she lived she would be 16 today but I still deliberately make her a part of the family like my children know she is the second born," she says.

"My two daughters who came after her know that they are not the eldest of my daughters there is someone else who went ahead of them. I have kept some of her clothes which my children have worn over the years and I still keep them even now so they know there was a child here and I talk a lot about her."

A few years after her daughter's passing and with God's good grace, Andayi welcomed her second daughter and that is when she finally started to heal.

"When my middle child was born I cried a lot in the delivery room so much so that the doctor told me he wouldn't be able to stitch me up. I don't know if I was crying since I had brought another child into the world or because I had lost one," she says.

"I was able to move on when I got my daughter it made it easier and I started getting rid of some of her stuff gradually. I began reading the bible more and praying and I finally understood that that there was nothing I could have done to keep her alive."