Cherisse Moe

An au­top­sy con­duct­ed on the body of ac­tress Mairoon Ali, 55, yes­ter­day, re­vealed that she died as a re­sult of cere­bral haem­or­rhage. Cere­bral haem­or­rhage is bleed­ing from a rup­tured blood ves­sel in the brain and is com­mon­ly re­ferred to as a type of stroke. Ali, an en­ter­tain­ment icon, was found in the bath­room of her Carl­ton Street, St James, apart­ment by her son, so­ca artiste Olatun­ji Year­wood, at about 10.30 am on Sun­day. Ali's sud­den death sent shock waves through­out the lo­cal com­mu­ni­ty, and con­do­lences con­tin­ue to pour in from var­i­ous sec­tors of the so­ci­ety. And on­line, friends and fans left hun­dreds of notes and re­mem­brances on her Face­book pro­file page. View­ing of the body takes place this af­ter­noon from 4.30 to 5.30 pm at Holy Name Con­vent, Port-of-Spain.

Fu­ner­al to­mor­row

The life and work of the ac­tress and di­rec­tor will be cel­e­brat­ed to­mor­row morn­ing, dur­ing a pub­lic fu­ner­al cer­e­mo­ny at Queen's Hall in St Ann's, Port-of-Spain. There will be a slide pre­sen­ta­tion from 9 am, af­ter which her fam­i­ly and mem­bers of the the­atre fra­ter­ni­ty will pay trib­ute to the play­wright, ra­dio host and tele­vi­sion per­son­al­i­ty. Len "Boogsie" Sharpe, Mavis John, Pene­lope Spencer, Nik­ki Cros­by, Ann Fridal, the Ma­lik Folk Per­form­ers, 3 Canal and Ali's chil­dren are among those ex­pect­ed to de­liv­er trib­utes. Af­ter the thanks­giv­ing cer­e­mo­ny, there will be a pri­vate ser­vice and cre­ma­tion for fam­i­ly and close friends at St James Cre­ma­to­ri­um.

Cere­bral haem­or­rhage

Mean­while, Dr Helmer Hilwig, head of the Emer­gency De­part­ment at Mt Hope Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal, who de­scribed him­self as a "good friend" of Ali, said a cere­bral haem­or­rhage could go un­no­ticed for many years. "In lay­man's terms, it would be called a stroke. It means that she had a large bleed­ing in the brain that caused her to loose her bal­ance. I sup­posed that is how she fell." "It is not un­com­mon to die sud­den­ly from a mas­sive stroke, even though the per­son seems fine on the out­side. "It might be that she had a weak spot in one of the blood ves­sels in her brain, and be­cause she prob­a­bly nev­er com­plained about hav­ing in­tense headaches, it was nev­er dis­cov­ered.

"Peo­ple can have them from an ear­ly age, and it's on­ly when some­thing dra­mat­ic hap­pens, they find out." Dr Hilwig, who said he treat­ed Ali in the past, not­ed that even if a doc­tor were called im­me­di­ate­ly to the scene, lit­tle could have been done to save her life. "This takes peo­ple by sur­prise; it's very dif­fi­cult to pre­dict in ad­vance. Even if a doc­tor was around when she fell, prob­a­bly not much could have been done." (With re­port­ing by Gillian Moore)