Thank you for helping my roommate

Just recently I started this cookie-sale fundraising for my roommate to help her get a ticket home to the PH. Though she was not able to go home because of work-related stuff, which I cannot disclose, she used this money to contribute for her grand mom’s funeral. My roommate and I aren’t the best of friends but I noticed how upset she looked to the extent that it got me thinking I was the source of her dismay (how narci. but who wouldn’t be dismayed to be my roommate when I got stuff so messed up hehe). I was bothered by it that I took the advice of my closest friends on how I could come forward and ask her how she’s doing. And so when I finally did, I found out that her grandma was in the hospital – unconscious. This doesn’t normally happen but eventually it did… us flatmates sat on the dining area and talked about life in general. I lost my mama when I was about to be 17 and I get how it feels. But in her case, she was away. She couldn’t be beside the person who took cake of her since she was a child because she’s here busy adulting. She shared that she had exhausted all possible ways to gather funds in order to pay her grandma’s hospital bills.

I can’t blame her for not going home at once. She was faced with a lot of challenges I couldn’t imagine myself being in. E.g. a colleague who’s on leave and not having anyone to relieve their duties. After that day filled with sharing between us flatties, she delivered the news through messenger that her lola had passed. I’m a lola’s girl myself. I felt helpless for her and imagine what she felt for the situation she’s in. But I couldn’t hand out a 3000QR all at once to make her go home even if I wanted to. I thought baking would be a good idea? But mid-baking I realized how stupid that was because it would take time for me to bake and sell all the goodies before I could come up with the funds and for her to eventually buy the ticket. She kept updating me with her lola’s, that somehow her interment got delayed because of the weather in the Philippines. I asked her if she wanted to go home. She wanted so badly to come home but it wasn’t possible because other important things are at stake, which I bet her lola wouldn’t be so happy for her to let go of.

A timely thought that I could use as a reminder for everyone, it’s not what we do after their passing that matters. All the flowers we offer, candles that we light and parties we organize cannot be felt by the person we lost anymore. Let’s make the living feel our love and appreciation while it can be felt. No amount of money can ever take away the pain of losing someone so dear to us.

I just want to thank everyone who helped me reach our goal 1500QR. I didn’t take a riyal for myself, only the funds I used to buy the ingredients, which to be honest is the only money I had left for this month :)) You can verify it yourself (because I’m too paranoid that people might think I used this as a channel to collect money from people) from her. She even insisted on not taking the 500QR but I told her that she can use this to whatever way she wants because she did every thing to gather the funds for her lola. I had given away the extra goodies for free to other people. And no longer delivered those who didn’t reply or followed up to my messages. I’ll be posting the orders report asap.