25 years after....

25 Years After… On the 7th May 1989, our only child, REBECCA took her last breath and flow to Heaven. Only four weeks earlier, we were celebrating her 17th birthday. We were so happy. If somebody would have told us that our daughter will be dead in less than a month, we would have thought he was out of his mind. She looked so full of life, gorgeous, lively and energetic. No sign of bad health at all. Yet, that exactly what happened to our daughter. Death took her away from us forever.

With her death, we lost our happiness which she had brought in our family exactly 9 months after our marriage. She filled our home with joy which it will take a whole book to describe it all. She was our reason for living and she made our living worth every minute of her life. She was our treasure and suddenly, death robbed us of our precious jewel. It seemed that the world had come crushing down on us. For the first year after her death, nothing seemed to console us and nothing could make sense for us. There was no sleep at night and we dreaded every new day which we had to face without our daughter, knowing that we will never see her face, hear her laughing voice or feel her warm embracing arms around us.

Yes, those first 12 months after her death were very difficult and painful. Looking back, I don’t know how we managed to live through those early months of our bereavement. It must have been the love and faith in our Lord, Jesus Christ. Surely, that poem – Foot prints in the sand – must be true, because there were moments that we could hardly stand on our feel, yet someone else seemed to be carrying us in his arms!!!! Time heals all wounds they say. As time passed by, we started to regain our senses and our self control. We had to accept that our daughter is gone forever and we will not see her again. We accepted our destiny and slowly, we started to build our life again.

We know that life will never be the same again for us but, since the sun rises every morning and, whether we like it or not, we have to live each day, we learned to adapt to our new way of life with all the pain, heartaches, severe grief and trepidation. I must confess that during all these years we found a lot of support from our relatives and friends who were always there for us in our most difficult days – and these days were numerous in the first couple of years!!! But the biggest comfort we found was in our own support – my wife for me and I for my wife. We provided each other a shoulder to lean on when, at times, we felt that grief will overwhelm us and that we can hardly stand on our own feet!!! As we read in the Acts of the Apostles, St. Paul wrote “That love overcomes every problem and every suffering”.

My wife and I became inseparable more than ever before. We live for each other and we are there constantly to support each other. We love our company and nothing seemed to give us more pleasure. Yet still there are those days, notwith- standing all these years, when we still feel that deep pain eating our hearts out. Christmas holidays are the worst of them all. And those family reunion, such as weddings. My wife is the youngest amongst 9 brothers and sisters and I have 2 brothers and 2 sisters too. In all, we have 33 nephews & nieces. We look around us and hope we can see our daughter amongst them. But we soon realize that she has long been gone. The thought of we don’t have anybody to look after us now that we are getting old preoccupy us at lot, although some of our nephews and nieces do care about us and we are sure that they will also be there for us if such needs arise. Carmel Vella Clark Malta