Sean O’Conner of Boston, Massachusetts has an uncle Scott Widak who’s 47 years old, has down syndrome and terminal liver disease. I heard an interview with Sean a few days ago on CBC’s radio show, As it Happens.
Currently Scott is bedridden and near the end of his days. He lives with Sean’s 85 year old Grandmother. One of Scott’s pleasures in life is opening the mail regardless if it’s a bill, junk mail, or whatever.
On March 29th Sean O’Conner posted a message on Reddit.com and in it he gave a brief explanation of Uncle Scott’s situation and added,
“Anyone feel like sending him mail or a card?”
As it turns out many did. In fact within a few hours people were responding on Reddit and a couple of days later 100’s of letters and packages began arriving. At first they started coming from close by then from Canada, Mexico, and the United Kingdom. Over the next few weeks mail started coming in from across the globe, from New Zealand, Japan, a few from Russia, one from Poland, and on and on.
There was no firm count but Sean estimated over 1000 people responded and sent something to his uncle. He mentioned how every letter and card was full of thoughtfulness and kindness.
“You can tell by looking at it that people put some real time and thought into it.”
In the beginning Uncle Scott didn’t understand what was going on and who these letters, cards, cd’s and dvd’s were coming from, but as they kept coming in it captured his attention. Scott hadn’t walked in a week but he was so excited when a box of letters was delivered to the door he got out of bed, made his way downstairs to receive them and brought them back up to his bed.
One of the letters, a very endearing one was from a girl in Sweden. It was addressed to Grandma and included a piece of custom jewelry she had handcrafted.
I’m so impressed with this whole story and I love Sean’s straightforward way of putting it. “I thought of Reddit as a way, hoping I could bring a little bit of joy into his life because he loves opening mail…
Why not ask my community at Reddit to send him mail because he loves opening it?”
Reddit has since taken Sean’s message off their boards because it violates their users agreement not to post too much personal information. Yet it was there long enough for over 1000 people to show up and respond in kind.
I caught the interview driving home after work. This to me, even on a Monday when I’d caught myself a couple of times a tad cynical, demonstrates the miracle of our times and especially the thoughtfulness, generosity, and kindness of many people in our world. Needless to say, I dropped my insignificant little whining and was overcome with a half laugh half cry that brought a liberating joy to my soul.
I think the universe was talking to me and I am grateful I was listening.
Click here, if you’d like to listen to the interview with Sean O’Conner: Random Acts of Kindness (and jump to minute 21:00).
2 weeks ago
