From the moment she first picked up a crayon, Elena Desserich loved to draw. Even as a preschooler, her favourite gifts were pastels, markers and blank notebooks.

So it wasn’t unusual for Keith and Brooke Desserich to find their little girl’s trademark purple hearts and “I love you” notes on scraps of paper and stray envelopes all over their suburban Cincinnati home.

But it wasn’t until weeks after their 6-year-old died of cancer that they realized she had left hundreds of messages planted in nooks and crannies for her parents and little sister, Grace, to stumble upon after she was gone.

This is both incredibly cute and incredibly sad. :-/