@Rafd9828 18 November 2021 more from that month

My beautiful rose flower is gradually fading away!

Nothing on earth they say lasts forever, no matter how beautiful, strong, healthy and successful you may have become in life, after a while everything gets old and  and worn-out. The life and everything about it moves on a transitional process and it's on that note I want to share with you today this great story about my beautiful mother who has lived her life, toiled day and night for me and my siblings just to put us all in the right track of life and today we are all reaping the great sacrifice she made for us all. Before I continue my story, I will like to say this important thing to us all, I know most of us here today have a mother who gave birth to him or her, nurtured and did all possible best to make sure they become better persons in the society. If you are part of these wonderful personalities that have this great privilege please make sure you love and appreciate your mother, also for those that grew up under the care of  their single parents and step mothers, you are also included in this great story that I am about to share today, please do all you can to always love and appreciate that person that stood in for you and made sure you had a successful life experiences and growth. ****MY SHORT STORY**** I came visiting my parents yesterday after years of not seeing them in person  due to the nature of my work, although we communicate most times on phone and on video calls but I never had the opportunity to be with them in person until yesterday. I was overwhelmed and almost dropping tears as I saw my one time most beautiful mother on earth gradually aging and getting weak with old age sickness and could barely see my face because her eyes were getting weak by the day, a great dancer of her time was not able to make her dancing moves efficiently because of her constant waist pain. Oh! my amazing mother that was so strong, young and very energetic when we were growing up under her care, who could multi-task herself at the same time to organise and arrange all the necessary things the house may be needing without having any ***"break in transmission"*** was now weak that I could feel it even from afar as I was coming into the house to meet her, she managed to walk to welcome me home after years of being away. A vibrant mother with a heart full of love and compassion for her children and anybody that comes around her.

One thing I could not forget to share in my story about her is her unchanging taste of her (ohà soup) one of our african native soup Igbo tribe to be precise, even in her old age, her meal was always the best of meal anyone could eat, her hands were still ever strong in making good and natural taste food, I almost finished 5 raps of fufu because I have really missed the tasty meal of my beloved mother. After the meal, she was so excited to share with me all the stories and events that happened around the community while I was away. You know one thing about our aged parents, they love to share stories because it's part of what comes with old age, when my mother was young she barely have time to tell us stories because she was working hard to take care of us, but now due to old age, she kept in her memory all the events that happened and even remembered the ones that long happened when we were kids, she told me all the stories all through the night. I could feel her joy and excitement as she was busy smiling while narrating her stories. I looked into her eyes and I saw old age gradually creeping on her and even in the sound of her voice, but in all of these changes that comes with nature, ***I could see an undying love and happiness in her heart because that was the oil that kept her heart and whole self alive till this moment.*** Even as her body and eyes were so weak and old age sickness gradually holding her down, she was so strong in her heart because ***the strength of a person comes from within.*** This morning as I was still enjoying the morning sleep after long night of discussion with her, I heard my mother knock on my room door as early as 5:20am this morning, my mother woke me up so we could pray together because that has been our every morning prayer ritual when we were small. Because of her age, she has a nanny who comes to the house to take care of the domestic chores in the house, my mother who likes to take care of herself and do things on her own was not able to due to her present health condition and old age. As I was in my room, I began to remember all the things my mother used to do on her own and how she was  running the house and merging it with her work when she was strong and vibrant and immediately tears began to roll down my cheek and it was dawn on me that ***my beautiful rose flower is gradually fading away.*** ****LESSON TO KEEP IN THE HEART**** ***Let me tell you this, no matter how beautiful, young, strong, rich, wealthy, energetic and good looking you may be today, tomorrow you must surely go down and gradually fade away, but only one thing will always stay strong and alive when you get to that old age, and that thing is love! That's why you have to always start in time to learn to love yourself and people you may meet in your life, when you love yourself, you will always do all you can to make yourself happy at all times, learn to appreciate any stage of life you find yourself most especially during old age, because that's the only way you can survive when the troubles that comes with old age appears.*** ***All of us alive and young today will one day grow old and gradually fade away. So let's start today to do all we can to live a happy life by learning to love because that's the only way we can live happily after when everything must have left us.*** ***Thanks for reading my article 🙏 Rafd9828***