Teeth marks in the apple…

A short story of Alexis

Some of you may already know who Alexis is from my previous blog post about ‘Alexis’ cross’, but for the sake of this blog, I will shortly say that she is my youngest daughter that passed away at the age of five from Aplastic Anemia. She was a ball of energy and like most children at that age, the ears were not always on the working side of things and she was busy discovering new things.

One of the new things that she discovered was when she tried to take a bite of an apple at my Mom’s place (even though I told her not). She then realized it was fake and my Mom has this bite mark left on her decorative apple. Her facial expression was quite precious because she didn’t quite understand why this apple tasted so bad and we had quite a giggle at her, shame, but lesson learnt…don’t bite the fake apples.

My Mom was going to throw the apple away at that point because she thought it was a little ruined for the purpose it was there for but then decided against it, which she is very grateful for now, I might add…and so am I. This apple reminds me of the spirit of Alexis. The little person that she was to everyone. In saying this, I urge you to not see the ‘ruined’ things that your children created by accident or by not listening to you as something to throw away, one day you will look back on them and appreciate that you kept them, or took a video or photograph of it.

I once saw an ad (I can’t remember what the ad was for) and in this ad, the child had drawn about three pictures on her parents’ wall in crayon (I think it was three) and instead of removing it immediately, the mother decided to frame them as her child’s works of art. I thought that was so precious and it really resonated with me. I know that sometimes you just want to flip out when they do something that they are not supposed to do, but please, do not get rid of it quickly…first document it, and you will be very happy you did.