The Burnaby family wanted to help a very specific family this Christmas, one that had been through difficult times.
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A Burnaby family wanted to help a very specific family this Christmas, one that had been through difficult times.
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“We have had many losses in our family and now we are in a position to give back,” said Carrie Ann Louis.
He contacted the Surrey Christmas Office, one of several charities in British Columbia that receives funding from readers’ donations to The Province Empty Stocking Fund.
Louis volunteered to “adopt” a family and she requested a grandmother to be raising her own grandchildren, in honor of her late mother, Violet Kennedy, who did the same until her death.
“I lost my mom in September (2020),” Louis said. “She raised her two grandchildren alone on a pension. She didn’t get any help. “
Violet raised both children by her daughter, Marianne, when Marianne died in 2012 at age 36. Jaden was nine or ten and DeShawn was five.
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Losing her daughter was a terrible blow to Violet. He did not hesitate and raised his two grandchildren.
In 2016, just four years later, Violet’s son David died at 52. It was two days after Christmas.
Christmas had already been a sad time of year for Violet. She lost her husband and father, both on the same day, December 26, 1999.
“My mom has been through a lot of losses in her life,” Louis said.
Louis said he knew he wanted to help someone who was going through something similar “more or less to do it in honor of the name of my mother, my sister and my brother.”
The Surrey office was able to put her in touch with a grandmother to “adopt” this Christmas, a woman who was raising her grandchild and who had suffered the loss of a grandchild a few years ago.
Louis and his two daughters, Hali, 18, and Naomi, 20, and Jaden, DeShawn, and Louis’s other niece, Tianna, 19, have contacted the grandmother and will buy the grandson’s toys and toys. gifts from grandma, and they will prepare a meal. basket case.
“We know how difficult it is to lose someone,” he said.
Violet at different times over the years had raised children, and Louis knows she would be delighted that she and her grandchildren were honoring her legacy of helping the less fortunate by helping a family that had been through difficult times.
“She was really great at giving back,” he said.
Reference-theprovince.com