It seems like one of those stories you read all at once, hoping page after page to reach an happy ending and that after all the pain everything would get solved.
I am talking about you Carol and about everything that started ever since you passed away… let’s say ever since you announced you were going to leave us, giving them the opportunity to plan the nice mess they created and from which we are not able to get out of.

I am starting to tell this story from today because today was one year since you passed and today just like one year ago I was here completely confused and embarrassed like I can only be in Daddy’s Home. I have been confused from the morning till the evening, to the point of hoping for the day to end to be able to lay in my bed and through myself on the keyboard of any device in which I could write everything down and empty my mind giving my brain a chance to recover. I feel so confused to the point I feel stupid and inappropriate when I think about the possible solutions to all the daily problems I face while living here. From the simplest ones to the most complicated I am always looking for a solution and I find myself thinking and doing the same as many others have already done before me. Despite all of this life goes on here, almost like a joke when you look at the whole thing from the outside and realise that despite everything life still goes on here no matter what.
 Confused and embarrassed. Embarrassed because my English most of the time is bad and when I am tired I can’t speak it properly. Embarrassed because I find myself dealing with people who live here all year long, in direct contact with all these issues that I hope to be able to solve during the two weeks I spend here. Embarrassed because I am asked to act like if this was my own home, but this isn’t my home and I am your guest Carol, yours and Noel’s, and I don’t want to invade places that do not belong to me.

 There has been a very nice programme at the end of the religious function, which took days and days to organise. Like always your kids demonstrated to have learned so much over the years and performed in all the dances and songs you used to love so much.

 My eyes filled with tears that I let stream freely down my face without even trying to hold them back. I was sure I could cry without being seen because I chose not to sit in the front, but with my kids of the Babies Home. I could not hold back the stream of tears when I saw Kishore and his boys dancing to Michael Jackson “Man in the Mirror”. Whoever has ever been to Daddy’s Home can understand what I am talking about. Kishore has a very sad personal history behind him, like many other kids here in Daddy’s Home. He could have ended up on a street, become a criminal, ended up begging for money on a street or selling himself for a few rupees if it hadn’t been for Noel and Carol. I have heard his story directly from him a month ago, sitting in a five stars hotel in Hyderabad between a coffee and a croissant with his smile on his lips. Because Kishore is always smiling every time I catch him lost in his thoughts, from which he come s back as soon as he realises I am looking at him.  

 I observed him dancing and performing so perfectly on the stage tonight, so confidently, the same song that I saw him dancing to seven years ago when I fist came here. Seven years ago he was a kid who was trying to imitate his American idol. Nowdays Kishore is a man who came back home from Hyderabad where he is studying, to get on stage and perform so flawlessly in front of all the other small men that just like him have been saved by Carol and Noel. That’s why I could not hold back my tears, which are still streaming down while I write this. Because tonight on that stage Kisshore and the other dancing kids so shiny and perfect brought you back to life Carol, so proud and happy of the way you saved them and brought them up.

 I though nobody could see me, still my tears were seen by the whole campus. They really don’t understand why Michael Jackson made me cry, they don’t know that I have been looking for you every day ever since I got to Daddy’s Home the 27th of February of last year, and again in September and in January and yesterday as soon as I got off the plane. I found you on the notes of this song that you loved so much, and in Kishore’s dancing and the other boys, I found you on Victoria’s floating dress while she was dancing with her friends. They are your miracles, which we are forgetting about looking for evil, though accusations and insults in the name of I don’t know what justice.

 I beg of you please stop them!

 These kids, these young women and young men are growing in a family of brothers, sisters, aunties, mummies and daddies.

 For anyone who has ever had the chance of spending even only one day in Daddy’s Home these must sound like music: Mummy! Mummy! Daddy! Daddy!

 We are all their Daddy and their Mummy and we can’t forget that their lives, for some kind of strange destiny’s game, has been entrusted to this structure who was founded and grown by Mummy Carol and Daddy Noel.

 Tonight we were told the story of Carol Linda Faison, because it’s been a year ever since she closed her eyes but every day in the Butterfly Hill or Daddy’s Home campuses or in the wonderful Lake Home and the small Sweet Home and in the different slums across the city and all the other humanitarian structures of this part of India in which tourism doesn’t exist, every day Carol and Noel have shown their strength by helping thousands of children.

 I can’t and I don’t want to believe that all of this could stop, because you can’t let a person die twice. She has already left us once, let her come back to her home among her big family where the man she loved until her very last breath keeps fighting every day for his kids.

 This is a war that nobody will ever win, and the only ones who will lose are going to be the kids.