Family tree of a lone survivor.

The above picture is of my grandmother. She was married at the young age of 9, which was the norm at that time. One surprising feature is that she gave birth to 13 children, of whom only the last child survived. She gave birth to eight sons and five girls. Among the sons, only the eighth one survived to the age of two. The other twelve children died of various reasons at the time of birth itself. At that time, medical knowledge was limited, and the reasons for those deaths remained unknown. My grandmother got psychic issues because of this and had to be locked in a room due to depression. The thirteenth child was my mother, and she survived. The photo below is of my mother with her parents.

My mother grew into a beautiful girl. She had long, curly hair under which she used to hide her friends, and her lips were fully rose-colored; those were her identities. 

She excelled in her studies and went to Trivandrum Medical College to study nursing. She became a qualified nurse. By that time, her father had passed away. When the nurses' uniform was changed to a frock, somebody took her photo, and it appeared in the Malayala Manorama newspaper, which was a leading newspaper at that time. That photo is shown below. 

While working as a nurse, she dressed the wound of legendary actor Sathyan of Malayalam cinema when he was admitted to medical college.

Then she got married to my father, who worked in the postal department. My father got a job in the postal department, where the salary was Rs 150 at that time, and in bank where Rs 75 was the salary at that time. So he opted for the postal department and became a central government employee.

Then came the first baby girl, who is a beauty queen now also. 

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Then she gave birth to my brother and me. The family photo shown below includes my father's father.

My parents worked hard and gave us  good education and got us married off to the best partners. They gave financial support to my father's siblings and helped them. We flew off and built our own small families. 

They retired and joined various forums in church and served society. They went on a world tour, saw the entire world, and wrote memoirs about it, so that those who couldn't go to such places could read and experience it. She used to do a lot of charity work. She used to give money and food to leprosy patients.

Recently, my mother passed away due to cancer. She was brave and fought the battle bravely, and finally succumbed. Three of us could see her passing away through video calls. She was very capable, decisive, and could easily gauge people. But God was cruel to her by giving her a painful death. But we still believe she is guarding us from heaven and remains a shining star in the heart of many.