Bittersweet Mom returns home with former conjoined twins … One full of life and the other dead

Gospel music drifted softly through the house as Iesha McMurray moved about in a room at her Payne Avenue, St Andrew, Address, yesterday, straightening up things in a home that now feels both full and painfully incomplete.

On her bedroom walls are memories frozen in time — photographs of her four children including a large portrait of her former conjoined twins, Azora and Azaria Elson.

She has only been back in Jamaica a few days after returning from Saudi Arabia following a “bittersweet” trip to the west Asian country where Azora and Azaria, who were joined at the abdomen and shared a liver, were separated during a ground-breaking surgery last November.

But the return to Jamaica she dreamt of has not materialised. McMurray had left the island expecting to come home with two surviving toddlers, but instead, she returned to Payne Land with only one child in her arms — and the other in a casket.

"The journey back home was bittersweet,” the emotional mother told THE STAR. “I came back to Jamaica with both babies, but only one came home. This wasn’t something that I expected at all. I wanted to be home with both babies."  

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After the surgery, Azaria was eventually discharged. But Azora, born with a weak heart, remained critically ill and dependent on life support.

Still, McMurray held on.

“I had faith,” she said simply. “I never doubted her.”

In between the weight of her memories, baby Azaria sat nearby — wide-eyed, alert, taking in a world she is only just beginning to know. At times she fusses, reaching out, wanting movement, wanting air, wanting life outside the walls she has mostly known as hospital rooms.

“She just want to be outside because was always in the hospital," McMurray said, managing a small, tired laugh. 

Born on November 7, 2023 at the University Hospital of the West Indies, the twins came into the world joined at the abdomen. Their journey took them to Saudi Arabia in July 2025 for separation surgery at the King Abdullah Specialist Children’s Hospital — a procedure that gave each girl a chance at independent life.

"The first time I see Azora standing up by herself I was amazed,” McMurray recalled. “The doctors said she was a miracle. From she did surgery she was intubated and the doctors had said she needed a heart transplant as they didn’t know what would happen if they removed her from the machine. When Azora woke up I remember the doctors saying it was a miracle. I was there when she woke up and I never had any doubt that she would. I had faith," she said. 

But on March 30, just weeks before they were expected back in Jamaica together, Azora died from complications.

McMurray paused for a long moment before speaking about her final hours.

"I was there with my baby when she took her last breath. Azaria had an appointment, but Azora wasn’t feeling well so I took her along to the appointment that I had for her sister,” the mother said.

Azora, she said, was vomiting and lethargic. Having been referred to the emergency room, McMurray went there hoping it was nothing major. However, doctors later discovered blood clots and organ complications. Her condition deteriorated rapidly.

“I was the one who gave it to her and she just stiff out and started having seizures, then she stopped breathe and that was it,” McMurray said between tears.  

Even now, she says Azora’s absence feels unreal.

At their home in Payne Avenue, Azaria is surrounded by relatives.  Yesterday she was full of energy, shifting from arm to arm, exploring faces and sounds like she was trying to map a world she had been away from too long.

And when her eyes landed on a framed photograph of her late twin, something changed.

She stopped.

She stared.

Then she looked away… and looked back again.

"She has been doing this from the first time she got here and see Azora pic,” her grandmother Stacy-Ann Ferron-Williams said. “It is like there is a connection that they both have, even though her sister is not here."  

Born together, they once shared every moment. But those closest to them say even then, they were different.

"Even though they were conjoined they had their own personalities and didn’t have that connection with each other,” McMurray said. 

“They would play, but not with each other. Azora was the little fighter and she would always fight her sister. Azora was always very active and all over the place. She was a very happy child and always smiling,” she said.

By contrast, she said Azaria is “not so friendly, but she would go to people.”

The grandmother agrees that Azaria is a mommy's girl. 

“She is really a sweet baby girl. We giving her time to warm up because is the first time she has come home, but she loves the road. Azaria love her food and from she deh a Saudi Arabia, she and her sister a eat dem dumpling and ting," she said.