by JustJanice

Created on: June 19, 2009   Last Updated: June 20, 2009

A Beautiful Gift

There have been many gifts in my life but one that stands out the most was seeing my mum receive a birthday gift from my sister-in-law. The happiness in mum's face was a gift in itself!

For mum's 75th birthday my sister-in-law decided to make her an album celebrating her life. She asked me to get out all of mum's photo's that I thought she could use. Well, mum, being 75 years old has collected a lot of photo's over the years and as this was a surprise for her I could not let her see what I was doing. She is very alert and likes to know what is going on, so, trying to keep the surprise a secret was quite difficult. I was given a brief from my sister-in-law hence I spent a few late evenings hiding in the bedroom wading through her box of memories gathering photo's to be used in the album, but this was nothing compared to the work my sister-in-law and her daughter put in compiling an album into a scrapbook format. She contacted relatives overseas from as far afield as Australia, Canada, England and Spain requesting photos for her to use. She even went to visit people that we haven't seen recently but played an important role in mum's life. Some of them lived quite far away. Every single person she contacted contributed photo's they thought could be used. Every single photo contributed was used.

Many hours were spent by my sister-in-law and niece compiling the album. Some photos needed to be enlarged while others needed neatened up.

Mum's birthday arrived and everyone gathered around to watch her open this beautiful work of art. We were all speechless, but no-one as much as mum. The album, made of a soft velvety material with a photo of a very young mum in her early twenties on the cover is truly beautiful. In her own words, this album is her only claim to fame with the first page showing pictures of her with friends before she married. The second page goes on to show some very romantic photos of her and my dad dating, the second of the wedding, the honeymoon and so on including their six children, grandchildren, great grandchildren and every single wedding there has been in the family. Not one person who has, in some way touched mum's life was left out.

The next day when quietly looking through the album, I was astounded by the amount of work and effort put into it, but more importantly the amount of thought that went into it.

Needless to say it is the best gift she has ever received and just watching her receive it was truly one of the best gifts I have ever received too.

Learn more about this author, JustJanice.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.