Sable Monroe

When I boarded the plane to Jamaica, I thought I knew exactly what this trip was about.
I was going back to the island I had left just before my twelfth birthday. I wanted to show my adult daughter where I came from. I wanted to eat fruit that actually tasted like fruit again. I wanted to walk through places that had lived in my memory for almost forty years.
What I didn’t expect was to come home with more questions than answers.
Montego Bay Felt Familiar… and Completely Different
I stayed at Hotel Grand A View in Montego Bay, and honestly, I have nothing but good things to say about it. The staff were warm, the housekeeping was excellent, and breakfast was consistently good. If I return to Montego Bay, I would happily stay there again.
The biggest surprise wasn’t the hotel.
It was the produce.
Anyone who grew up in Jamaica remembers fruit differently. I certainly did.
I remembered mangoes dripping with sweetness, juicy naseberries, star apples that stained your lips, and fruit stands overflowing with produce that tasted like sunshine.
Instead, almost everywhere I went, the fruit looked tired.
The hotel’s fruit wasn’t particularly memorable. The fruit stands around Montego Bay disappointed me. Even the mangoes I bought on the beach were sweet but already overripe.
I honestly wondered what had happened.
One of the hotel employees explained that Hurricane Melissa had done tremendous damage to agriculture, and suddenly everything made a little more sense. Nature had interrupted a food system I remembered as almost magical.
It reminded me that while my memories had stood still, Jamaica had not.
My Daughter Saw Fish. I Saw Time.
Doctor’s Cave Beach was one of the highlights of the trip.
Not because of me.
Because of my daughter.
She put on her goggles, disappeared beneath the water, and came back smiling because she had seen tropical fish while swimming.
She had never experienced that before.
Watching her discover something for the first time reminded me that this trip wasn’t just about looking backward.
It was also about passing something forward.
I showed her the hospital where I was born.
The roads I remembered.
The neighborhoods that shaped my earliest years.
In many ways, I was introducing her to the beginning of my own story.
Then We Drove to Tucker
This was the part I had been thinking about for months.
I hadn’t been back since I was almost twelve years old.
I didn’t have an address.
I wasn’t carrying old directions.
Montego Bay has grown so much that I honestly wondered if my memories would fail me.
Then something strange happened.
As we entered Tucker, I felt it before I understood it.
The road looked different.
New buildings had appeared.
Everything had become more developed than I remembered.
But somewhere inside my brain, an eleven-year-old girl quietly woke up.
After we passed the Tucker sign, I knew there would be another bend.
Then another.
I wasn’t guessing.
I remembered.
The closer we got, the more certain I became.
And then…
There it was.
My grandmother’s property.
I found it almost forty years later without ever having an address.
I cannot fully explain what that felt like.
Part triumph.
Part relief.
Part disbelief.
The House I Remembered No Longer Existed
When I was a little girl, my grandmother’s house was one of the nicest homes in that part of Tucker.
That’s how I remembered it.
Walking onto the property, I realized I had preserved that image in my mind for almost four decades.
Reality had not been nearly as kind.
The houses had deteriorated.
Storm damage was still visible.
Windows were missing.
Roofs had suffered.
Time had done what time always does when no one is there to stop it.
Standing there was heartbreaking.
Not because old houses grow old.
Because I knew they hadn’t always looked like this.
My mother and her brother inherited this property after my grandmother died.
Seeing its condition made me realize how much can change when no one is able, or willing, to maintain what previous generations built.
It was impossible not to imagine the life that once filled those yards.
The conversations.
The cooking.
The family gatherings.
The ordinary moments that eventually become memories.
A Beginning Disguised as an Ending
I thought finding my grandmother’s property would give me closure.
Instead, it created an entirely new mystery.
I still don’t know where my grandmother is buried.
Now I’m researching death certificates, land records, church records, and family history.
I have more questions today than I did before I booked the flight.
Oddly enough, I’m okay with that.
Because this trip taught me something important.
Memory is stronger than I ever gave it credit for.
An eleven-year-old girl who left Jamaica nearly forty years ago somehow remembered enough to guide a driver back to the place where her story began.
That isn’t where my journey ended.
It’s where my investigation started.
Montego Bay answered one question.
Kingston is still waiting.
Cascade is still waiting.
And somewhere in Jamaica, my grandmother’s final resting place is waiting too.
This time, I know how to begin looking.