As I look at you, I remember all the memories we made, the promises we swore to keep and all the tears and laughter we shared. I ask myself: “How could I have been so blind? How did I not notice the signs?” but it’s too little too late. You’re gone, forever.

My sister, my best friend, my mother, my everything. She had it all: the looks, the money and even the perfect husband. She was a role model, a public figure and a mom to orphans. It’s such a pity she never had her own kids. In the past five years, I’d only seen her once or twice but we’d Skype every now and then because of the challenge of residing in different countries. I’d often seen her in magazines and on TV with her husband always by her side. She couldn’t be happier, or at least that’s what I thought. She’d achieved her biggest dream of getting a law degree. Life on her side seemed to be going pretty well.

Yet with all of that, here I am. I look at her and I want to shake her and maybe she’ll wake up and tell me it’s all a joke, but I can feel she’s gone. Tears threaten to overflow from my eyes. I look up, trying so hard not to let them fall, but I fail and they pour down my cheeks. I’ve cried so much in the past week I can’t believe tears can still find their way to my eyes.

When I heard she was gone, my whole world blew up in smoke. I wondered: Did she have an accident? Was she sick, because she surely looked fine to me the last time we spoke? But NO! Her husband of a decade had beaten her to death in their own home. She’d been a living punch bag for years.

Amongst her things I found her diary where she had written every single detail of the beatings she’d had. She had gone through the worst pain any woman should ever endure: seven miscarriages in the past five years.

Then it hit me: all those times she smiled for the camera, it was all an act. When everyone envied her, wanted to be her, she prayed that no one ever went through what she was going through.

[From her diary]
Be careful what you wish for, you might just get it. I wished for a rich, handsome husband and I got exactly that. He was rich, handsome and to the world, loving. To me, he was a monster, a nightmare, someone I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. If you are reading this, I’m most probably gone.

You see, as kids we tend to wish for a future husband with money to supply us with all our needs. We forget that money is not love, that it does not make a person or build a stable home. Today, I pray that God denies me my childish wish for a rich husband.

Marcus used his wealth to pay off doctors and officers to overlook all his evil deeds. The world was so blinded by his expensive clothes that we all failed to see his evilness, forgetting that ALL THAT GLITTERS IS NOT GOLD! He was a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

My sister, an angel like her name: Angela. We saw her life as being perfect. We were so mesmerised by her outer appearance that we never took a glimpse at her soul. We were so focused on the smile that we missed the tears at the corners of her eyes.

Even though she’s gone forever I learned something:
JUDGE WITH YOUR SOUL AND NOT YOUR EYES.
LOOK DEEP BEFORE YOU LEAP TO ANY CONCLUSIONS.