Sending You Home, Edwin❤️

My heart is so heavy from knowing that a dear colleague passed away so suddenly. I have known kuya Edwin Flores since I came here in New Zealand. We hadn't bonded like usual friends do, but we always had deep and sincere conversations (and some good laughs, too!) during our meal breaks at work...enough for me to know how a good family-man he is. He worked like a mad man just to provide for his family back in the Philippines and sacrificed his own happiness for them. Like what my other colleague had shared about him, he didn't mind having had $40-$50 left in his bank account so long as he could provide for his family back home. "It's just money," he would say. He had this air of confidence and toughness that people see but inside is a good man, well-loved by his family and friends. Me and my small family had the opportunity of witnessing a precious and tender moment with his son, Patrick...This was on his last birthday alive, barely 2 weeks ago. We saw how he hugged and kissed Patrick, sniffed him like a little child (Patrick is already in his 20's). My heart just melted at that sight, thinking at the back of my mind that it is how I wish my relationship will always be with my son, who is only seven years old now. Yet as the day goes, I am alive and he is not, and a bittersweet realization of how temporary life is-it is just borrowed and that no one is invincible,that everything will always have an end. And that's why we need to live and cherish each breathing moment...which is now.

I am writing this message and creating this page, as my way of remembering kuya Edwin, and also to hopefully somehow make more meaning to my life- by trying to help his bereaved family. He passed away on the 18th of October, not able to say goodbye to anyone nor showed any signs that he was going. He has only a son with him here in Christchurch, NZ, and left a loving wife, 3 children, and his grand kids in the Philippines. Thus, I am knocking at your hearts..if you believe in prayers, please include him so he may rest in peace and for his family to heal...and if you have an extra amount of money to spare, your kindness will be of great support to his family and for kuya Edwin's remains to be sent back to the Philippines, to reunite with his love ones, to be home..And maybe, if you can just pause for quiet moment with him in your thoughts, it must also be enough.

Thank you kindly.