Phyllis and Ronald Tomlinson - Ian AllenBy Leonardo Blair,
Staff Reporter
VERY few wives in Jamaica will ever experience the horror of watching her husband being shot in front of her while his blood washed the floors of their matrimonial home.
Phyllis Tomlinson did.
Most husbands would be extremely grateful if after two vicious criminal attacks on his life, lost vision and fading hearing, his wife remained as faithful and loving as Ruth was to Boaz in the Bible.
Ronald Tomlinson did.
So much so, he gets all emotional and teary-eyed every time he talks about his wife and her binding love.
Phyllis, 78, and Ronald Tomlinson, 89, nurtured an inseparable bond in the gut of adversity. After almost 42 years they are now relishing some of the better moments of a near perfect love.
The couple who are from Waterloo, Santa Cruz, met in early 1959 and by May 1st that same year they were married. They had no time to waste, they had found love in each other's eyes.
"Ah was a seeing man at the time, ah could pick and refuse ... but a choose har (Phyllis) out of love ... the Holy Ghost help me fi choose," recalled Ronald, a devout Apostolic Christian.
"Yes I loved him, ... ah caan describe it ... it was just love, yuh know, it was just love," stuttered his petite wife, while blushing.
Mrs Tomlinson sat close to her husband and gave him a listless stare. She had been his only pair of eyes for a long time and will soon become his earpiece. She then emptied herself with a melancholic laugh and returned to the conversation.
"I love him," she declared with a girlish laugh. She stared at him again, through glassy eyes and touched his hand.
"It was the Lord that keep us...I believe it is the love of the Lord that keep us," she said.
In 1966, bandits beat Ronald and robbed their home. In the summer of 1992 gunmen shot Ronald in the face.
"The sight had started to deteriorate after the beatings but the shot has affected his hearing," said Phyllis. She then broke away in nostalgia and began to relate the sordid memory.
"They beat him in the face. They go around there (the side of the house) and come back here (the front) and thrash him. That was the first attack.
"In 1992 ... I could remember that ... we went to our bed. A church brother was in the outside room sleeping ... after we fall in sleep now. Yuh know I ... it was the Lord at that time we use to sleep and leave the door open for the night is so hot but that night something just come to me and say shut that door. And ah go and a shut the door but it didn't lock and when we were in our beds. I hear somebody say "Bredda T!" But I thought it was the brother from the other room say, "open the door!", so him (Ronald) get up now off the bed and ask the brother what yuh want? And him ask (of the supposed brother) "if yuh feeling sick?" and them say "open the door!", that's all them saying, "open the door!". And Brother T him half crack the door now fi let in the bredda and by the time him half crack the door, there goes the robbers them come een and flash him, shoot him up!..."
The gunmen then took off and left the Tomlinsons to savour their misfortune. Ronald who was very strong through everything wrapped his head in a towel and rushed to his pastor's house on the church premises. He was rushed to the Mandeville hospital by his pastor who counselled them through the ordeal.
After that incident Phyllis' love just moved to a different plain, and she never complained. In sickness and in health she had vowed.
"It didn't affect me that much, ah just survive," she said indifferently. "Ah have to care for him because he is not dead he is alive," she said.
The couple admit that they have had their differences but nothing they couldn't handle. "Things like why yuh put that cup there, why yuh leave that plate there," quipped Ronald.
They say that the best times in marriage came through serving God.
