Sonia Kemp said every time she passes the Fox Hill Park she sheds a tear.
She cries for her 19-year-old son who was shot in the head on December 28 and buried on Sunday.
It's a day Kemp said she will never forget. Shaquille Demeritte was one of four people who were fatally shot that night.
Seven others were injured during the shooting.
As Kemp looked around her front room where several pictures of Demeritte hung from the walls, she sobbed silently.
Struggling to compose herself, she told The Nassau Guardian that her life will never be the same.
"I'm still in shock," she said, gazing at a Christmas tree.
"I'm still thinking that I'm going to wake up from a bad dream. I have to come to the reality that he is not coming back, but it is so hard for me."
Kemp said her son completed barber courses at the Bahamas Technical and Vocational Institute (BTVI) in December, about two weeks before he died.
"He had a passion for barbering," said Kemp, who is a hair stylist.
Demeritte got to live out his dream for a week.
"My husband surprised him," she said.
"We didn't tell him, but we built a barber shop for him on the side of my salon. When he found out he was so excited. He took all of his money and bought all of his equipment.
"We worked in the store all day on Friday, and at 5 o' clock he said, 'Mommy, I'm hungry. I'm going to get some Chinese food'. The last thing he said was 'I'll be back soon'.
"Later, I was in my room and I heard gunshots. I was upstairs and someone came banging on the door and they gave me the worst news. They said someone shot Shaquille in the head. I ran to the park and I saw Shaquille lying in the park."
His uneaten Chinese food was by his side.
He was already dead, Kemp said.
"I can't eat," she said softly. "I can't sleep. The park is supposed to be the place where children can go and be safe.
"How am I supposed to go on? I don't know. My life will never be the same. That's my child. He was so good. He never raised his voice at me. He was a good boy.
"He just had a passion. He just wanted to work in that barber shop."
Demeritte's stepfather, Carl Kemp Sr., and his younger brother, Carl Kemp Jr., were also at home when the news came.
They all went to the park the night Demeritte died.
Kemp said her youngest son refuses to talk about what happened that night.
CJ, as his family calls him, still wears the chain that Demeritte was wearing when he died -- a colorful wooden chain with a cross pendant.
As Kemp began to tell The Nassau Guardian about her deceased son, CJ got up and left the room.
"Call me if you need me," he said to his mother as he walked by.
Kemp said her youngest son is trying to be strong.
"But he misses his brother," she said.
As she looked at old pictures of Demeritte, Kemp recalled when he graduated from primary school and high school.
She said he loved basketball. Scores of trophies line a cabinet in the front room. Kemp said Demeritte was a standout on his Bahamas Academy basketball team. He graduated in 2012.
"I don't know how to go on without Shaquille," she repeated.
"I would have taken that bullet for him if I had been there. I would have taken it in a heart beat. I loved him so much."
Despite the violent way in which Demeritte died, Kemp said she takes some solace in a message she received from a stranger who was there with Demeritte after he got shot.
"That night he died, a woman was at the park," she said.
"When I got there, she stepped back."
Kemp said the woman knelt at Demeritte's feet and held his hand and prayed with him before he died.
"I thank God that she was able to give me that reassurance."
Kemp, Demeritte's stepfather, said he touched many lives.
One in particular was a man who was known to him only as the neighborhood drunk.
Kemp said after Demeritte died, the man told him that he stopped drinking after he heard the news of Demeritte's death.
"That's the kind of impact he had on people," he said.
Kemp said he was sorry that he never got around to getting Demeritte to cut his hair. Instead of going to another barber, Kemp, who normally keeps a bald head, allowed his hair to grow for a few weeks, but said he planned to cut it for the funeral.
Speaking at Demeritte's funeral on Sunday, Fox Hill MP Fred Mitchell said certain things in life are just inexplicable.
"Evil and bad things happen to good people," Mitchell said.
"Life is unfair. It is hard. It is unpredictable. It is sad.
"But it is also joyous. Just think what a good young man Shaquille was. Just think that he just happened to be where he was at that time, with his friends waiting for the Junkanoo results.
" Just at that time, evil struck. What explanation can we have for such gross and unspeakable evil?"
Mitchell added, "We are a Christian people. Christianity is a deterministic religion. It says we are responsible for our salvation. It is our minds that control our flesh. We must work every day and sing our song -- that if the tempter comes our way, then he will not prevail."

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