Parents discuss coping with loss of 4-year-old son Jayden Morrison
Tabatha Morrison shuffled her feet across the kitchen floor of her mother’s home in Hidden Lakes subdivision Saturday, her slippers slowly tapping the tile floor just one day after her son Jayden’s body had been found in a nearby pond after a three-day search.
“This house is too quiet,” she said. “Jayden was the noisemaker.”
Jayden, an autistic 4-year-old boy, was visiting his grandmother’s home in the Hidden Lakes subdivision with his mother and two siblings — Jordan and Kelsey — when he vanished on Christmas Eve at dusk. His body was found shortly before 11 a.m. Friday, calling off a search involving more than 200 volunteers and emergency crews from throughout South Carolina and North Carolina.
“No one could have predicted this,” Tabatha Morrison said. “It’s Christmas. It’s supposed to be a happy time.”
A tearful holiday
The family had not been in Carolyn Sumpter’s home since August, so there had not been food or anything fresh in the house to eat. So, Sumpter’s daughter, Tabatha Morrison, went to the North Myrtle Beach Wal-Mart. Her son Jayden followed his mother to the door and watched her leave. She was in the checkout line buying about $400 worth of food and gifts for her three children when she got the call Jayden was missing.
Andre Morrison, Jayden’s father, stayed in New York because of his committments as an assistant superintendent for a construction company. He began driving to South Carolina Wednesday night.
“When I got the news of his disappearance, I came down and I immediately went on a trail,” Andre Morrison said. “My heart had a sense he ended up in the lake.”
Jayden loved his textures.
The feel of grass, leaves and mulch even led his father to his whereabouts long before divers found Jayden in the retention pond.
“They would have seen his trail from him grabbing at the ground,” Andre Morrison said. “The cops told me, ‘Ya, he did walk through here’ because you could see the wood chips and that’s why that vicinity over there was what my heart kept leading to. I saw stuff in the ground that said that could have been my Jayden grabbing it or whatever the case may be.”
Andre Morrison said Jayden had a different relationship with water.
“His upbringing with water was funky because his experience was mostly in the bathtub,” Andre Morrison said. “He didn’t really like pools or beaches, but when his mother would fill the bathtub up, he’d be all right. He’d like to take himself and submerge and do the water around his face. He would be fussy to get into the tub, but when he would get into the tub, he would do that and he liked grabbing the water because of the sensory.”
On the rainy Christmas Eve Jayden went missing, there was a new stimulation for him to experience.
“That’s what kept leading me to the water elements,” Andre Morrison said. “Not because of the water, but it was because of the edges of the water. The leaves, the mud. And that day his sensories were probably in overdrive because it was raining. Being that he was sheltered and he didn’t really get a chance to experience nature in its full force with rain, snow and so forth, on his face, he probably was grabbing at it and enjoying the showers of rain and grab[ing] the elements.”
A mother’s nightmare
It was shortly before 11 a.m. Friday when Tabatha Morrison learned her son’s body was found.
“It’s a mother’s nightmare,” Tabatha Morrison said. “It’s a mother’s worst nightmare. A 4-year-old baby is not supposed to die. No child should die before their parents.”
Shortly after Jayden’s body was pulled from the water, Tabatha Morrison was able to hold her child while he was in the Horry County Coroner’s vehicle.
“I held him. I hugged him. I told him I loved him,” Tabatha Morrison said. “I told him I was sorry for not protecting him.”
She said word spread to New York quickly, including to Jayden’s school: Hawthorne Country Day School.
“Those teachers are beside themselves,” Tabatha Morrison said. “Jayden was making such progress in school.”
Her work continues now as Jayden’s siblings begin asking where he is. She said Jayden’s twin, Jordan, was smiling and laughing while he was sleeping Friday night — a sign she believes Jayden visited his brother in his sleep.
“I’ve never ever seen him do that,” Tabatha Morrison said.
She said their brotherly bond was tight.
“They were always together. They would sleep cradled next to each other.”
The closure and the ‘Water of Life’
Andre Morrison said he, too, was sent a message in his dreams, but his was on Christmas night.
“I was prepared for that closure because I felt it the night before that a closure was going to come,” Andre Morrison said. “Not necessarily that my son was going to be deceased, but I felt closure and I was going to get an answer. The Most High told me to stop, because I was out there toward midnight, walking, and He said, ‘Go back home. I’ll take care of this. I’ll bring you closure.’ ”
Andre Morrison was searching for Jayden Friday afternoon when he received the call that Jayden’s body had been recovered. Shortly before noon, Andre Morrison knelt in a shallow area of the pond and grazed his hand along the top of the water.
“I believe in spiritualities and when I heard they found him in there, the instincts of nature led me to the water,” Andre Morrison said. “Out of anger, sorrow, fright, horror, all of the above, I was going to head to the water for whatever reasons. Once I got into the water, I guess the spiritualities embraced me and instead of looking at it as a dark place, I look at that as a holy ground. That lake to me is forever in my heart. So I touched it. I must have obtained the same sensories that my son did upon his entering in there, because when I saw his body, it looked like he went in there with a smile. It looked like he was sleeping. It wasn’t like distress. ... When I saw that and I embraced the water, it gave me a soothing feeling. ... I realized that part of my solace is over by that water, by that spot.”
Again Saturday morning, Andre Morrison visited the retention pond.
“[Saturday] morning I was over there, again you don’t know what’s going through your head, a resident that lives right behind there...” Andre Morrison said. “He came out, and I apologized for me being there and he said, ‘No, you don’t understand’ because he lost a child the same way. So I know this was delivered. So we just sat down there and talked and prayed and I filled up water bottles to bring back to New York that are going to have my son’s spirit.
“So now I look at it as water of life. A negative turned into a soothing feeling, and that’s how I ended up being at peace with that water, personally.”
Andre Morrison can’t help but believe his son is enjoying the afterlife.
“I know he’s in a better place,” he said. “Life is better for him. He’s probably talking it up now and loving that he can talk.”
A community’s support
Sumpter and the Morrisons visit once in a while, so when they saw hundreds of volunteers searching for Jayden, they were overwhelmed.
“These are people I don’t know who are coming to the house,” Tabatha Morrison said. “I don’t know these people, but everyone’s been so great.”
A candlelight vigil was held Saturday night for Jayden and Andre Morrison couldn’t thank supporters enough.
“This neighborhood and this region, the embrace that we had, for a northerner, and for the police force, who I told in the midst of all the turmoil going on in this country and the vice that’s given toward them, I told them I, for one, will say you all are heaven-sent,” Andre Morrison said.
Tabatha Morrison said the love shown by strangers nullifies national news reports of negativity.
“It restored my faith in the human race,” she said.
This story was originally published December 27, 2014 at 2:46 PM with the headline "Parents discuss coping with loss of 4-year-old son Jayden Morrison."