Cherished Blogfest 2017 #CBF17

Thank you for the extended Cherished blogfest – I was happy to see this invitation in my inbox, from Dan Antion, and was glad to make a post and connect with so many other bloggers who are inspiring through their posts. This post is part of the Cherished Blogfest, that is hosted by  Damyanti Biswas, Dan Antion, Cheryl Pennington,  Peter Nena, Sharukh Bamboat, Mary Giese, and Kate Powell, Paul Ruddock, it is open to anyone who wants to tell the world about something or someone they cherish. If you want to join us, click here. The blogfest is open until Midnight Sunday.

I cherish this lovely laminated card made by my daughter Maria Dorothy when she was just 12 years old and presented to me on my birthday in the year 2013.  Since then I have hid this in my files and whenever I feel like looking at this J I take this out from my files and keep smiling at this lovely gift.

I admire the effort she took in picking up different photos from our family album, and with great excitement brought a cake and celebrated my birthday, which brought tears to my eyes. I never expected my little daughter to have grown up so fast and to take this initiative of making me happy.

The year 2013 was a time I was just recovering from the loss of my son Mario Emmanuel who passed away at the age of 7 in  January 2011. A difficult feeling to deal with – grief…  and for one whole year I took up swimming in the campus everyday in all seasons beginning from summer, rainy, winter and then continued to beat my depression.  I was still in the process of getting healed as my son occupied the centre of my life and to lose him suddenly was shocking and the least expected.

In view of which I did not celebrate my birthday the consecutive years – and like a fresh breeze in my life my daughter who was in class 5 at the time of his death, held me and looking at her innocent face and her sweet smile I fought with myself to let go of my painful memories of my son and move on, in order to do justice for her existence in our lives.

“Tears which last a lifetime speak for the most cherished memories made.”

My daughter was a constant reminder for me to live in the moment, responding to her needs helped me cope with the most difficult phase of my life. I found that she was also missing her brother and struggling to deal with his absence – probably her way of distracting herself was to immerse in coloring and creatively working on the computer and creating this beautiful card.

This card brought a smile on my face and turned my grief into gratitude.

Thank you for reading my post and would love to connect with you all and would love to know what is the favorite object you cherish.

Be Blessed and Be happy !!