When my father passed away, my mother, Epifania Barrizo, went into a deep depression. She was crying every day. My siblings and I tried to help. We would take her to have her nails and hair done and bring her out to eat, but when she came home, she would keep crying. She couldn’t function.
At that time, my sister Wilma was a nurse, working in the hospital in Davao City, Philippines. One day, she came home from work and said, “Mama, I have something for you.” My mother thought it would be food or something trivial, but it was a baby. Wilma said, “Mama, this baby is going to stay with us for a week because social services has no place for her until then.”
My mother devoted herself to taking care of that little girl. When she started looking outside herself by taking care of the baby, she became alive again. Her depression was erased as she took care of another child of God—a baby who needed someone. It was amazing for me to watch my mother wake up from her depression and become like herself again.
Before the week was over, we adopted the baby, and she became our sister, Honee, the 10th child in the family. To this day, my mother and Honee are very close, and I am very grateful she became part of our family. It’s like my mother said: Honee is of our hearts, even if she’s not of our blood.
Editor’s note: This article first appeared in the May/June issue of LDS Living Magazine.
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