A Final Goodbye Before "Everything Fell"

[Hissyspit]

http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/americas/01/13/haiti.death.profile/index.html?iref=allsearch

A final goodbye before 'everything fell'
By Ashley Fantz
CNN
January 13, 2010 12:16 p.m. EST

(CNN) -- On Friday Martin Poitevien said goodbye to her parents at Miami International Airport before they flew home to Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

"My mom is a worrier so I just told her, 'Stop with your worry. Go home and enjoy your life with Dad. Go home and have the happiness and peace you've earned and deserve.' I will remember this always because she didn't say anything. She just smiled," Poitevien said in a phone interview Wednesday.

Four days after the visit, a few hours after a 7.0-magnitude earthquake struck the Haitian capital, Poitevien's brother called to say he had gone to their parents' house to make sure they were all right. He saw his father's feet poking up from the rubble. Seventy-five-year-old Fede Poitevien died in his living room. By Wednesday, Innocent Poitevien's body also was found, her daughter said.

The couple had spent their lives in one of the Haiti's most depressed districts, Carrefour. In a nation considered the Western Hemisphere's poorest, the Poiteviens worked tirelessly to maintain the family pharmacy, putting every cent toward their children's educations.

Martin Poitevien is a clinical cancer researcher in Miramar, Florida. She left Haiti in 1986, shortly after her husband was murdered, she said.
She first moved to Canada and then to South Florida with her young daughters.

"The girls really adored their grandparents. My father acted like my daughters' father in many ways," she said. "My parents were strong people, but I must be the strong one now. I am expected to be that way. I have not told my daughters yet. I am not sure how to tell them."

"Those days ... at least ... to have them (before)," she paused, "everything fell."

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[roguevalley]

1. how awful. how totally awful this all is.

[Libertas1776]

2. no words n/t

:cry:

[MadMaddie]

3. There are going to be thousands of these stories

Just heart breaking! May her parents RIP!

[Hekate]

4. Oh. God. No words for the heartbreak.

[Kindigger]

5. Facebook family search group

There's over 2,000 photos of missing people so far. It's :cry:

http://www.facebook.com/groups.php?ref=sb#/group.php?gid=252988675717

[Jennicut]

6. I cannot imagine. I am extremely close with my parents and my two young daughters

are extremely attached to their Grandpa. It would break their heart if something happened to him. My heart just goes out to these people. So much suffering and they have already been through so much there.

[nadinbrzezinski]

7. Steel yourself, more stories like this are coming out

and I hate it... nature of disaster.

On a personal note during the Mexico City Quake that was our fear, for a little while... as the comm tower went down and we could not talk to them.

So after that, we just cherish them more... and it is strange... not that they came close mind you...

It just felt that way.

[Terra Alta]

8. :(

This is just so horrible... and I'm sure there are thousands of other stories like this. I just can't imagine. My heart breaks for these poor people.

[voc]

9. :(

[donheld]

10. k & R