THREE days away from Mother’s Day, three-year-old Dogus Tupou Lolohea still waits for her late mum Elenoa Dicovi to return home. Known to her simply as “mommy”, Dogus has never stopped asking her grandmother about the day her mum, Elenoa, would return home.
Yesterday, High Court judge Justice Salesi Temo sentenced her dad, Timoci Lolohea, to 18 years in prison for murdering her mum last year.
The joyful toddler tightly hugged her mum’s pictures as she listened to her grandmother’s interview with this newspaper.
Sharing her experiences at their Naqai home in Labasa yesterday, the late Dicovi’s mother, Laisa Tamai, said her family had chosen to withhold the dark reality of her daughter’s demise from her granddaughter and to inform her later when she was ready to know.
Ms Tamai said for now, they would tell her granddaughter that she did not have to worry because her mother was working in Suva.
“We learnt that the man who murdered my daughter mercilessly last year has been sentenced to 18 years imprisonment, but that does not change anything about the grief we have in our hearts,” she said.
“Every single day that I am questioned by my granddaughter about her mother’s whereabouts is a painful reminder to me that Elenoa is no longer with me. “
“The family had been approached by relatives of Lolohea and we have received them, but we have told them that it will take time for our grief to heal completely.”
Dicovi’s father, Savenaca Tamanilele said his daughter would have been 24 years old if she was alive today. Dicovi was the seventh child of nine siblings.
