Silk’s spouse: It feels like Garnett hasn’t come home in a long time

Novelyn ‘Lovey Silk’ Banton is amazed that a quarter century has passed since that day she will never forget. “It doesn’t feel like 25 years. As a matter of fact, it feel like him (Garnett Silk) just don’t come home in a long time now,” she told The Sunday Gleaner.

Actually, that was the story that Lovey told her children when Garnett, the man she remembers as the most caring father and greatest partner, died.

“My mother told me that my father was on tour. He died two weeks before my fifth birthday and I remember a lot of things, but not the funeral, so I believed her. I remember visiting my uncles in hospital, but nothing about the funeral. It was years later that I knew that my dad had died,” Lovey and Garnett’s first child together, Fabian, told The Sunday Gleaner.

One of Fabian’s memories is of him and his older brother eagerly running up the stairs to show their father the “songs” they had written, only to see him and Lovey kissing. “My brother and I would look at each other in disgust and go back down the stairs,” he recalled, laughing.

Lovey remembers Garnett Silk as a joker “who would kill you with joke, but he would roast you until yuh get angry”. But, that roasting is one of the things Lovey misses greatly from her life. And also the deep spirituality that was part of their everyday life. “Garnett was the one who would let you know when you walked out of line, and that was one of the great things about him. Also I miss our preparation on a Friday evening. It was a mad rush every Friday evening. We had to cook and bake and do everything and if it nuh finish him a turn off the stove even if the pot still on the fire,” she recalled fondly, adding that Saturday was church for the entire family.

Lovey Silk was a pregnant 23-year-old with four children – three children of her own, plus Garnett’s eldest son – when the singer died. “Derron, Garnett’s son who lived with us, was eight, Fabian was four and the girls were two and one year. (Garnett Jr was born the following April.) We had gone down to Mandeville on a little holiday and were staying at his sister’s house. Garnett went down to his mother’s house, which wasn’t far away, and later in the night, his brother ran back to the house and he looked burnt up. He said, ‘Mama house burn down’. I asked, ‘Where is Garnett?’ and he said, ‘Garnett dead’. I said, ‘How yuh mean Garnett dead? Where’s your mother?’ He said, ‘Mama dead’. I went blank,” Lovey recalls.

Lovey went to the hospital, but she wasn’t allowed to look at Garnett’s body. After that she was just going through the motions, until it was time for her to face reality. “I had to wake up and realise that I had all these kids and was pregnant. It’s not a nice place to be. We definitely should have received counselling. It was a rough road but we survived. The kids are all grown now and I am happy to see how they have turned out. The children were Garnett’s world and he would have been proud of them,” Lovey said.