This is an extensive report by the Coloradoan. Read the story here:
There's a poem slipped into a plastic frame on the bottom shelf of this northeast Fort Collins home, a few steps away from where family tragedy unfolded in early November. The 14 lines are slipped into the left side. A photograph to the right was taken a few years ago and shows a pair of mile-wide smiles.
A desperate mother crafted the words about four years ago to encourage her then-second grade daughter there would be better days ahead — that the hardships accompanying adolescence would fade and her daughter would one day find her way in the world.
"To Ari, my sweet lil' girl; the one who has the key to my world!; the one who has my nose and my eyes; who loves to eat ketchup and lots of French fries," Gigi Godinez wrote.
Mom begins to cry as she reads the poem aloud. The tears wash away the moment of pure happiness forever frozen in the photo.
"You are my lil' bit of sunshine; your smile lights up my days; you steal my heart and keep it; with warm, endearing ways."
Mom never imagined when she wrote those words that she'd be reading it years later after her daughter died by suicide.
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