Bo­bie-lee Dixon

She brought joy to many through the­atre. She was of­ten the voice of rea­son on her ra­dio and tele­vi­sion pro­grammes, much sought af­ter to host pop­u­lar events, along with her bud­dy come­di­enne Nik­ki Cros­by. An all-rounder when it came to en­ter­tain­ment, Mairoon Ali did it all. But most im­por­tant­ly, she was a friend, a moth­er and a sis­ter to many. Sad­ly, the life of Ali was cut short when she re­port­ed­ly slipped and fell in the bath­room of her Carl­ton Street home in St James, some­time be­tween Sat­ur­day night and yes­ter­day morn­ing. She was 54. How­ev­er, the cause of death is yet to be de­ter­mined.

Ac­cord­ing to rel­a­tives, Ali was found by her son so­ca artiste Olatun­ji Year­wood around 10.30 am yes­ter­day, on his re­turn home from a night out. At the scene yes­ter­day, where the body re­mained for just over two hours be­fore the dis­trict med­ical of­fi­cer ar­rived, the at­mos­phere was filled with gloom and sad­ness, as un­der­tak­ers re­moved the body from the home of the for­mer Holy Name Con­vent teacher. "Bawl, man Bawl!" yelled a rel­a­tive, and every­one broke down, her son wail­ing in grief and ask­ing God why. Ali had a pro­gramme on I95.5FM, but was cur­rent­ly work­ing with Gayelle, the Chan­nel.

?A dis­traught Nik­ki Cros­by, Mairoon Ali's best friend, cries, as Dale Enoch takes some time to gath­er him­self be­fore talk­ing with re­porters at Ali's home on Carl­ton Street, St James, yes­ter­day. PHO­TOS: An­dre Alexan­der

'She was full of life'

Dur­ing a brief in­ter­view yes­ter­day, close friends Cros­by and for­mer pres­i­dent of the Me­dia As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T Dale Enoch de­scribed Ali as a woman full of life who had a lot more to do. "I didn't just lose a friend, I lost fam­i­ly to­day," said a teary-eyed Cros­by. She said Ali re­tired from teach­ing to go ful­ly in­to the­atre. Ali was al­so in the midst of writ­ing a book of po­ems ti­tled Mairoon's Mind, she added. "She al­ways used to say that she had an­oth­er good 20 years to go be­fore some­one could help her...I don't know how to han­dle this," Cros­by said. "Mairoon was just full of life. We were sup­posed to go Christ­mas shop­ping to­day...I can't think of Christ­mas with­out her."

Enoch echoed Cros­by's sen­ti­ments as he rem­i­nisced on the new year's trip they were all plan­ning to St Lu­cia. It would not be the same, he said. "This woman was about life and liv­ing, none of us is pre­pared for this," he said. Ali leaves to mourn her son Olatun­ji Year­wood, daugh­ter Aka Ali-Year­wood and step­son Roland Year­wood. An au­top­sy is ex­pect­ed to be per­formed on the body this morn­ing. Ali act­ed in a num­ber of plays in­clud­ing the Vagi­na Mono­logues and Sex in the City. She was quot­ed in yes­ter­day's Sound Off sec­tion of the Sun­day Guardian. Ali was con­cerned about crime and "the Na­tion­al Per­form­ing Arts Cen­tre, on which so much mon­ey was spent to build and I am wor­ried that as we speak, we have no place to house our great­est shows for Car­ni­val."