My Parents’ Dilapidated House

They say that a house is not a home as it's just a place where people live. But a little comfortable house is not something anybody should be deprived of, especially when it is the only place you got.

My family have been in the same house since we were very young. This is my mother's parents' house and this is where my mother grew up with her siblings. This is also the same house where she started her own family with my father. Her other siblings have decided to find a place of their own but somehow, my mom opted to stay and to care for the house. It's an old ancestral house and we have never left the place as this reminds us of so many memories- both good and not so good ones -- yet still memories. The walls of this house have seen us from when we were very little to when we are now older. The corners of this house have been the silent witnesses to our joys, laughter, tears, failures and hopes. This is where we have started, and this is still where we are now.

But just like with anything else, when time passes by, the vigor or the youthfulness is never permanent. Eventually, time wears anything down. May it be our hearts, our souls, and even a used-to-be sturdy interior post or a ceiling. Just like my parents, our house has gotten older and more tired.

I'm writing this in the hope of getting financial assistance in helping us renovate our house that's falling apart. My sibling's and my job barely get us food on the table and it breaks our hearts to see our parents' eyes and smile grow tired and weary because our house is hardly livable now. The ceiling is falling apart, our roof leaks that when it rains outside, it also rains inside; the walls have too many cracks, the stairs and even the staircase have become weak and flimsy that it's become dangerous; screen windows and doors torn out (mosquitoes, flies and other insects plague us both day and night), walls are heavily stained with soot (we didn't have electricity for 4 years and so we used gas lamp), more-than-a-decade-old peeling wall paint, cracked concrete floors, a sagging couch with springs poking through. The house has become a hazardous place but we don't have anywhere else to go. We can't afford a new house.

My sister and I are the family's breadwinners. Our combined-but-still-meager income solely goes to our food, water and medicine for our parents since my mother has diabetes and hypertension, while my father has hypertension. With our current financial situation, we can't even afford the price of a single tin roof. But we are so desperately wanting to get our house fixed for our mama and papa.

I'm knocking on your kind hearts to please help us get closer to our dream of having a livable house. Our parents mean everything to us and we only want to make them happy. It's almost Christmas and my sister and I really want to renovate/fix the house as our Christmas gift to our parents. That's all they've been dreaming about-- to have a comfortable house.