Birthdays are always fun with Good people around you

Birthdays are always special for all of us. This is one day when we are the center of everyone’s attention. This is a day when your loved ones will leave no stone unturned to make you feel special and blessed.

For last several years, I have been away from my family and since then, I have preferred to have a close niche hangout with friends or even lie down at the comfort of my bed soliloquizing.

Birthdays are also a milestone day for introspection, and I usually use that day to see the progress I have made and the way ahead.

Recently, I will set certain goals and try as much as possible to reach out to the less privileged to mark my birthday,

This year, I had a memorable birthday, many of my close friends showered me with a lot of gifts and kind words and my awesome teammates in the office, came to my home to serve me breakfast in bed.

I again felt the joy I had as a kid when our birthdays were celebrated with friends, family and neighbours at home. I felt nostalgic by the ambience of my birthday.

I again felt like a child and was really enjoying being pampered. Birthdays are so much fun with honestly good people around you.

In the morning on my birthday, after the surprise breakfast in bed, I was feeling as if it was not my birthday but my engagement or wedding morning. I was really touched by the love and affection I got from my loved ones (online and real-time) and close family members who sent their hugs from afar.

My family members are not close, because they are in distant states, but I never felt their absence because I got much love from the Fides family.

On my birthday after the breakfast I was welcomed to a huge surprise birthday celebration at my office organized by my boss. In fact, I never expected I would be welcomed with instruments and birthday songs at the Fides studio. It was indeed a memorable moment for me. So, getting to be celebrated in the photography studio where I work was a blast for me.

Then we went to the prison at Amawbia, which was also very fulfilling because I got to share my joyful day with inmates who sang and wished me well on my new age.

The beautiful smiles on their faces as they sang and prayed with me keep appearing as images in my thoughts. I would not have imagined that they were so nice to be with if we had not visited.

After the prison visit, we headed for the Priests Welfare Home, Catholic Diocese of Awka, to see my elderly friends and to celebrate with my birthday mate, Rev Fr Simon Azuka, who turned eighty-three. I had visited them last year on my birthday, then, they were six in number but when we went there, they were just two of them with an addition of Monsignor Simon Amateze.

It was an emotional moment for me, because images of them and how they were gently seated to welcome that day flashed through my memory, I wept but thereafter was consoled because they were in heaven resting after all. My birthday was again very memorable.

Been among the elderly and receiving words of wisdom from them was the climax for me. After that, we went home and then we had a little and memorable outing with my friends.

I would want to use this medium to thank my boss, Rev Fr Martin Añusi, my teammates and friends and all those who made my day gracious.

I hope that our love will multiply with time, and we celebrate more birthdays together.