WALDORF, Md. — Wrapped in a black coat, Romechia Simms walks through a cemetery in Southern Maryland on a cold March day, tiptoeing around headstones, making her way to the grave of her 3-year-old son.
She’s still grieving for him, still trying to forgive herself for how Ji’Aire Donnell Lee died — on a swing in a park where she’d been pushing him for nearly two days. Although a judge in February found Simms not criminally responsible for her actions because she suffers from schizophrenia, she has to find a way to live with what happened. And what she’s lost.
At Resurrection Cemetery, Simms snaps a photo of the grave marker, which shows engraved images of Ji’Aire as a baby.
“Hi, Babee,” says Simms, calling him by a nickname.
“Hi, Babee,” says her mother, Vontasha Simms.
Romechia, 25, reaches down and cleans the grave marker with a napkin, wiping off dirt, polishing it until it shines in the setting sun.
Then she notices something missing from her last visit.
“What happened to his little car?” she asks. “There was a red toy car right there.”
