The tiny casket lowered into the earth last Friday brought an end to weeks of agonising uncertainty for western Jamaica mother Shandale Ballentine, but not the grief that has consumed her since she left the hospital without her newborn son on Good Friday.

Baby Ramontay Rakai Ranger, whose death at the Cornwall Regional Hospital on April 3 sparked national outrage after The Gleaner first highlighted the case, was laid to rest during Child Month, a painful irony not lost on the grieving mother, who says she still struggles daily to accept her loss.

“I’m more relieved now that he’s finally laid to rest. It was a long stretch. I didn’t like having him on ice for so long,” Ballentine said in an emotional interview with The Gleaner.