Children beg mummy to come home for Christmas

A Christmas wish has come true. Instead of cutting up breadfruit like she used to, Monica Felix now has meat and other goodies on her table for Christmas. “My Christmas wish came true,” Monica Felix quipped to Newsday reporters when we visited her San Francique Road home at Penal yeaterday. Felix and her four grandchildren — Nickosia, 12, Nicholas, ten, Nicolette, eight and four-year-old Stephon, immediately began unpacking of foodstuff — a kind gesture from someone who read about the family’s plight. Two months ago, Newsday broke the story of Felix’s husband’s death and her struggle to take care of her four grandchildren. The children’s mother, Marcia, (Felix’s daughter), left home a year and a half ago and has not returned.

Grandmother Felix had reached the point of desperation and was forced to feed the children breadfruit on a daily basis. After publication of the grandmother’s plight, Felix told Newsday that donations have been pouring in from many people. “Blessings, blessings — my wilderness experience is now over. Thank God,” Felix quipped. Members of the Trinidad and Tobago Regiment even reconstructed Felix’s dilapidated home. “I am so happy that words are not enough to describe how I feel to see my grandchildren being fed a proper diet and my house being re-built to a proper standard of living by members of the Defence Force,” Felix said, holding back tears. But what is Christmas for children without their mother. “Please mummy, come back home to us. We miss you and we want you home for Christmas,” the eldest  child, Nickosia, pleaded.