Dhanraj Chaz Cepal promised his brother, Joshua, that they would go together to the visiting Suarez Brothers Circus. Additionally, he would use his first salary from the teaching job he expected to start on September 2 to buy Joshua whatever fun things he wanted. But Chaz would never deliver on his promises. In the early hours of Sunday, August 31, he drove his mother’s car into an electricity pole at Union, breaking it and causing a power outage in the area. By all accounts, Chaz died on impact.
At the time, Chaz’s mother, Samina James Cepal, was at Sandals Halcyon, where she works as a nurse. She answered the phone at 6:10 am, expecting the caller to be a guest in need of her assistance. Instead she found herself listening to an officer from the Gros Islet police station who wanted to know if she drove a green car, and what was its number plate. He also asked Samina to spell out her son’s name.
“I spelt the name,” Samina recalled, “and then I asked: ‘Is he dead?’”
Next she called her son’s father: “I said, ‘Cirus, where is Chaz?’ He answered that Chaz was in bed asleep. I forgot everything I had learned about handling such a situation. I blurted out: ‘Chaz is not asleep. Chaz is dead.’”
According to Cirus Cepal, Chaz had gone out around 7p.m. and he expected his son to be back after three hours or so. Cirus turned in around 11p.m. thinking Chaz would return home a few minutes later. He told the STAR: “I thought he was in his bed sleeping. I cannot describe that. I said to [Samina], ‘What nonsense are you saying? Chaz is asleep, I tell you.’”
I formed the impression that despite them no longer living at the same address, this had not affected the estranged couple’s devotion to their 18-year-old son. But they grieve differently. Cirus is having a hard time controlling his anger at the loss of his son at such a tender age. Meanwhile, Samina is comforted by the knowledge that her son enjoyed his short life. “He lived,” she said, eyes lit up. “Chaz lived!”
Corroborating the scores of social media posts and the speeches made about Chaz at his funeral last Sunday, his parents described him as kind, intelligent, talented, jovial and amusing. Neither his father nor his mother could recall Chaz being defiantly disobedient. “All his friends knew Chaz had bread,” Samina chuckled. “He always had this thing, about bread. He took at least ten loaves with him to school to share with his friends.”
Cirus: “I remember I was upset with him once. I had told him not to go to town because it was raining heavily. But there was one girl alone at the school. Chaz decided to accompany her to Castries, just to be sure she was safely on a bus. Then he returned to the school for whatever reason and came home later than expected. I was about to chastise him but he said: ‘No, daddy, wait, listen. I was helping somebody.’ That’s the kind of person Chaz was.”
For Samina, the most memorable testament of Chaz’s selfless personality was when he and two other boys were suspended from school for a week after a phone went missing. She says Chaz knew the identity of the thief but never revealed it.
“Wings of Love, at the time they were feeding homeless people,” Samina recalled, “so I got Chaz to go there and help out. It was supposed to be punishment. By the third day he thought I was taking too long to get ready to take him to Wings of Love. At the end of the week, he wanted another week of suspension so he could continue helping those homeless people. After school he would still go to help. He was that kind of person.”
Chaz was dedicated to developing his prowess in cricket, football and drumming. He was involved in the peer helpers group, debating, and environmental clubs at school. He also invested time in the Pathfinder Club at church. “Some days I think he just lived quickly, as if he was going to die. He took in everything, a little bit of every single thing,” revealed Samina.
Excited about his first job, shortly before he passed, Chaz bought five pairs of pants, new shirts, shoes and belts. “The boy was just ready,” his mother sighed. “I asked him, ‘Are you going with a book bag?’ He said, ‘No, I’m a teacher, I want a side bag like my father’s.’ He wanted a Wowbox for school!”
Samina, as earlier noted, is a nurse. Her estranged husband Cirus had been a teacher. Chaz wanted somehow to do at once what his parents had done. He planned to start with teaching, then move into nursing, with the intention of becoming a nurse educator. But, most of all, Chaz hoped to play county cricket in England. Said Cirus: “That was his dream. He and Joshua would talk about that all the time.”
His parents admit that it took some time before they recognized their son’s cricketing potential. Their boys learned to catch a ball by bouncing it off a wall because it was difficult in Vanard to get an area to play cricket. “All children were at some cricket academy, but not our kids. When we moved, he just picked it up. He just picked it up and ran with it,” said Samina.
Chaz excelled in the Windward Islands Under-15 and Under-17 cricket teams. He scored his first century on the Beausejour Cricket Grounds at age 13. With obvious pride, Cirus recalled: “It was the SDA Under-13 team playing the John Eugene Cricket Academy. He scored that century and SDA defeated John Eugene. John Eugene could not understand that. He scored 121. I mean, he has his academy but who knew about SDA? Nobody. And then they show and beat Eugene’s academy!”
In his mother’s telling, Chaz sometimes fantasized about getting married one day in his cricket gear. He didn’t quite manage that so his parents did the next best thing. They buried him in his full cricket regalia, and with his football and goalkeeper gloves. As for securing for the funeral the location where he first made 100 runs, the Cepals thanked MP Ezechiel Joseph and Prime Minister Allen Chastanet.
They wanted the ceremony to be as theatrical as their son. Said Cirus, eyes awash: “Mr. Tom T and these two, I have to commend them. Also Delia Francois, Mrs Goodman and her team, Caron Tobierre and my staff at the District One office. They came through.” They helped with the set-up, the sound, red carpet, decorations and catering, all without charge!
“I’m just pleased that he wasn’t drunk,” Samina said finally. “The autopsy revealed this.” Chaz was driving alone at the time of the accident so his parents cannot say for certain what happened. Nevertheless, they seem to have settled on two possibilities: he may have fallen asleep at the wheel, or he may have lost control because of speed.
