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For more than a year, Janice Morgan lived inside a grief that refused to end. Her 18-year-old son Alex White had drowned. An autopsy was done, but more than a year later, his body is in the morgue, and his distraught mother is waiting for permission to bid her last goodbye.

Alex, a tour guide from the Laws district in St Ann, drowned on May 22, 2024, during a rafting trip in Snow Hill, Portland. According to a police report, he had jumped off a raft to swim and got into difficulty. His body was pulled from the Rio Grande and taken to hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

The last time Morgan heard his voice was on a brief phone call the morning of the incident.

"Mi did a try reach him from early," she recalled. "Mi joke wid him say, 'Yuh nuh see mi a call yuh?' Him laugh and say him busy. Him always did a move fast when him have tour work."

A few hours later, her phone rang again, but this time, it wasn't her son.

"A boy [who] mi nuh know call and bawling pon di phone. Him say, 'Mommy, nuh drop dung,' and mi a ask 'Who this?' Him say is Alex phone him a use. But before mi could ask more, the call drop."

She sat in silence for what felt like hours. Later that evening, police confirmed that Alex had drowned.

The funeral planning that should have followed never came. Instead, she found herself in a loop of uncertainty.

The post-mortem was conducted last August, nearly three months after his death. Morgan said she wasn't informed of the date for the post-mortem. After that, she was asked to submit a DNA sample before she could view or claim the body.

What she expected would be a brief process turned into more than a year of waiting.

"Mi keep thinking, 'Maybe next week mi get the call.' Mi pray every night," she said. "Sometimes mi dream say him walk through di door. And mi wake up and cry."

In the meantime, his belongings remain untouched in her home.

"I never move nothing," she said. "Mi couldn't."

When the burial order was issued earlier this year, she finally went to the funeral home to see his body. But what she found was hard to bear. However, she claimed that there was an issue with the document that extended the delay.

"The name on the autopsy report never match the doctor who actually do it," she said.

Morgan said the untimely death of her son has weighed heavily on her, and it has been made worse by the inordinate wait. Some days, she said, she would call places just to hear someone answer the phone.

Calvin Lyn, president of the Jamaica Association of Certified Embalmers, told THE STAR that extended storage of bodies can happen, especially when DNA verification is involved, or if relatives are unavailable to collect remains. However, he noted that each case is unique.

"That's strange," Lyn said. "Many times when we send the body for autopsy and the relative is not there, the body is returned to storage. But this... this is strange."

Alex had been working part-time as a tour guide in Portland. He loved horses, was saving up to buy one, and had dreams of one day opening his own riding business. His mother described him as quiet, funny, and someone who made friends easily.

"Him did just a start life," she said. "Him love adventure. Him love the river."

Morgan said he visited her in a dream and told her his death was no accident.

"Inna di dream, mi son come to mi and say, 'Mommy, ... Mi never kill miself,'" she recalled.

Yesterday, more than 14 months after his death, when the phone rang, the police informed her that the necessary documents had been signed and she now had permission to have the body of her youngest of three children cremated and have a memorial to bury the ashes.

"Mi feel like... a piece of mi heart get rest."

But after everything she's been through, Morgan is holding back her relief.

"Mi nah believe it until mi collect the paper," she said. "Mi hear this before, say soon, say soon. So mi a wait till me collect it."