A moth­er who strug­gled to cope with the dis­ap­pear­ance of her son has died.

Rel­a­tives sus­pect grief got the bet­ter of Sha­fi­na Khan af­ter her son, 28-year-old Ja­son Bap­tiste, went miss­ing fol­low­ing a bru­tal pi­rate at­tack which claimed the lives of five fish­er­men from Or­ange Val­ley less than four months ago.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia Lim­it­ed days af­ter the vi­cious at­tack, Sha­fi­na de­scribed how she man­aged to sur­vive nu­mer­ous health scares in the past, in­clud­ing five heart at­tacks and two strokes, how­ev­er the dis­ap­pear­ance of her son had left a gap­ing hole in her heart, “I don’t know what to say again, I re­al miss my son, he was every­thing to me, it have no­body to say Ma, what you cook­ing to­day.”

Last Sat­ur­day while at the fam­i­ly’s Or­ange Val­ley home Sha­fi­na suf­fered a stroke and was rushed to the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal.

Her wid­ow­er Cyril Bap­tiste said his wife of near­ly 30 years was his every­thing, but the dis­ap­pear­ance of their son crip­pled her, “when we get up we use to make cof­fee, I would sit with her and we would talk we had a re­al­ly good re­la­tion­ship but af­ter Trevor (Ja­son’s nick­name) went miss­ing things fell apart for her. She used to say she see­ing him in the house, she used to re­al­ly miss him, cop­ing was dif­fi­cult.”

On Wednes­day Sha­fi­na suc­cumbed to the stroke she suf­fered. Cyril said up un­til the end he was there for his wife, “I vis­it­ed her every day, squeezed her hands, rubbed her head and spoke to her, but I knew she would not have made it out.”

But Bap­tiste is not the on­ly griev­ing.

For the sec­ond time in less than four months, Nizam Khan has been plunged in­to agony.

Af­ter bid­ding farewell to his broth­er, he and his fam­i­ly now brace for their fi­nal good­bye to a woman who many say nev­er re­cov­ered from a bro­ken heart.

The bod­ies of teenag­er Justin Kissoon and Ja­son Bap­tiste were nev­er found af­ter the bru­tal pi­rate at­tack off Car­li bay.

Dur­ing the in­ci­dent, sev­en fish­er­men were beat­en and forced over­board.

Four peo­ple have since ap­peared in court for mur­der and oth­ers of­fences linked to the case.