GEORGETOWN — After nearly eight years of round-the-clock care, quiet suffering, and unanswered questions, 15-year-old Matthew Zaman died early Wednesday morning—leaving behind a mother whose life had revolved entirely around keeping him alive.
Matthew was just eight when he was struck by a minibus along the East Coast of Demerara in December 2017.
The impact left him completely paralyzed. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t speak. He couldn’t even breathe without the help of machines. Doctors said the brain damage was permanent.
His mother, Bibi Shanaz Khan, gave up her job as a domestic worker and stepped into a role no parent ever wants to take on. She became his nurse, his therapist, his voice, and his constant companion.
For years, she managed every tube, every machine, every small sign of movement. She did it all from home. “He couldn’t move, talk, or even breathe without a machine, but I stayed with him. I did it all,” she said in an interview quoted by the media.
“I took care of him for years and never got any justice until the driver crashed up and died. I am praying to Allah to hold me up and keep me strong… this October he would have celebrated his 16th birthday…”Despite the devastating diagnosis, Matthew did show small signs of progress.
With regular physiotherapy from the Ptolemy Reid Rehabilitation Centre, he was eventually able to sit upright for short periods and flex his limbs slightly—progress that gave his mother hope, even if doctors were never optimistic.
The man who hit Matthew, Andrew Albert, was charged with dangerous driving and released on bail. The matter remained unresolved for years.
Then, in a cruel twist, Albert died in a separate accident five years later, before the case ever made it through the courts. For Bibi Shanaz Khan, that was the final blow. “I never got any justice,” she said.Now, instead of planning for a birthday, she is planning a funeral. Matthew will be laid to rest on Sunday.
His death has left a silence in the home where the steady sounds of a ventilator once marked each passing day—and where every movement had been a milestone.
His mother’s grief is layered: it is the pain of losing a child, the exhaustion of years spent fighting for small gains, and the weight of knowing the person who caused it all never answered for what happened.
