To MOM…

To my wife and our mom

A few years ago, today, an angel was born with a heart of gold. The translated announcement in the newspaper read: “To Mother and Father, a beautiful daughter is born, all is well, we thank our Heavenly Father and the doctors and nurses of the Hospital”.

Over the years her parents nurtured her and loved her as she grew and blossomed into a beautiful young woman who brought joy to everyone she met, who enriched people’s lives with her pure, true heart and inspiring love, never relinquishing that which she held dear to her heart, but standing strong to protect it with determinate fire in her belly. They may not be with us in life anymore, but their love is still represented by these flowers**.

When you reached your mid-twenties and before we met, you wrote this as motivation for yourself in daily life. Your handwriting and I kept it after I found it.

I was drawn to you like a moth to a flame, in fact your beautiful eyes were that flame, I could not stop looking at them, at you. You were my soul mate, you were the person I would gladly give my heart to, the one soul I wanted to wake up next to every morning, just to see what you would say or do, to hear your voice, see you smile, hear your laughter, your humour and yes sometimes your anger.

Today, my love, it is your birthday! I found a birthday card of yours when you turned one, which translated reads: ” Today, you are one, may God give you many a year, Bless you with joy and with every small step, lead you safely and keep you save, though His angels to a life full and with much joy.” This holds true, even today.

I want to wish you the world and shower you with the love of all the stars above. You deserve nothing less. I want to thank you for the way you held my heart all these 18 years, how you protected it and how you nurtured our love and kept our flame burning through thick and thin for your love is always caring, a precious gift, always there in a hug, caress and your touch, be it our son or his dad.

I want to thank you for our son, for the way you protected him, even before he was born and for the mother you are. I want to thank you for giving him the same strengths and determinations, which he already shows, and giving the world another little bit of you through him to live on long after we are not there. I see so much of you in him and even though you are 100’s of kilometres away from us, in a sense part of you is sitting right next to me. Another beautiful angel, born with a heart of gold.

So Happy Birthday my love and mom. With this we send you all the love and kisses we can muster and wish you a wonderful day. We cannot wait to see you again and wish you just joy, love and success for the year to come.

Geseënde Verjaarsdag Mamma!

Ons is Lief vir jou.

The Boys

** The flowers have special meaning. The carnations come from mom’s parents, her mom passed away nearly 17 years ago now, and still, every year, we get lovely red carnations for her birthday, a reminder of their love for their daughter. It is therefore no surprise that daddy used this as the theme for this post.

*** The pictures are supposed to focus on the love as demonstrated by her parents and as we go to the “now” we go full colour. The semi-colour photo with Boeta is meant to show the change of guard, sort of, as he takes the flower from then to now, because he also represents 50% of mom and thereby her parents.

Following is some fun pictures while we attempted to put this together, not easy with time delay and daddy having to run and catch the little man for a pose in 20 seconds.