Mickela Panday breaks down delivering eulogy of ‘great, funny father’

In the midst of her grief, Mickela Panday chose to remember her father, late former prime minister Basdeo Panday, as a great, funny, charismatic man.

Mickela delivered the eulogy at her father’s state funeral on Tuesday morning at the Southern Academy for the Performing Arts (SAPA) in San Fernando.

Panday died at 90 in the US on January 1.

Mickela said it never crossed her mind that her father would not return home alive after his medical consultations. This, she said, was owing to his “sheer will, determination and fighting spirit.”

She said anyone who knew Panday knew he never complained, because he did not want others to worry about him.

“You would never know he was not feeling 100 per cent. Up to the last moment, nothing changed. He was always smiling and making everyone around him laugh.”

She recalled the doctor in the US walking in and asking him how he was feeling, to which he teasingly replied, “Doc, if I was feeling well, I wouldn’t be here.”

“He was always full of spirit, to the extent that everyone who met him immediately loved him.”

When he died, she said, the family’s world “shook, never to be the same again.

“The shock, pain and disbelief were numbing, but when you grew up as my sisters and I have, a sense of duty immediately kicks in.”

Mickela has interacted extensively with members of the public who have been mourning her father.

She added, “Yes, he is our dad, but he did not belong to us alone. He loved people and people loved him. So we knew instinctively that although this was one of the most difficult things we were ever going to face in our lives, we had to balance our own grief, (help) our mother (Oma Panday) and put country before self, as our father would do.”

She said her mother and three sisters loved him fiercely.

“He was a great father who supported us without ever being judgmental. He was always there when we needed him, (and he let us know) it’s not always about being the best but doing your best.”

She recalled a funny moment with him, this time when she was about five years old. She played a snowflake in her primary school’s Christmas play.

While on stage and excitedly trying to spot Panday in the audience, she fell, but got up and continued.

After the show, she asked Panday how she did and he said, “Mick, it was great – but it was the first time I ever see a snowflake fall so hard."

“That was our dad.”

She thanked everyone for their support.