I’ll tell you about my ex sister-in-law - Kim. She was the last of my brother’s three wives. The divorced about 25 years ago and share a son and a granddaughter.
My parents helped put her through college after she and my brother married. She became a school teacher, like my dad was before he retired. My dad also helped them build their first house. She and my brother get along quite well, and my brother just drove 4-5 hours to help pick up a tractor for her boyfriend.
But that is backstory, and not what makes her good. My mother has dementia and my father takes care of her.
Every week Kim cooks a number of meals and takes them to my parents since my mom is in no shape to cook and my dad doesn’t really know how. She even fixes a few meals for my brother to have as well.
Aside from being loved by them and loving them in return, I believe that she recognizes how much they helped her by putting her through school. She doesn’t have to do this, but she does it because she has a good heart.
My friend here (who is about my age, may a couple years younger), took in her two child relatives about 10-11 years ago. It was shortly after I’d moved here so just met everyone. She was a single middle-aged gal and suddenly she had two young kids living with her (about 8 and 5 or 6).
The reason she took them in is because if she didn’t, they were going to have to be put into the foster care system. They are the kids of her niece and the niece was strung out on drugs. They have different fathers - I think one father is dead (or otherwise out of the picture) and the other father was in jail. The kids lived in BF Tennessee about 2 hours from here.
So my friend took them in, paid for tons of therapy (all these years) and about 3 years ago, she formally adopted them. I was there at the final adoption hearing (the courtroom was full) and nary a dry eye.
The oldest graduated from high school and is off the college in a few weeks. The younger is either a sophmore or junior to be and he’s been working part time at Publix (grocery store) and loves it and plays soccer. Doing OK in school. The birth mother went to rehab and has cleaned herself up thus far and has slowly been restarting a relationship with them.
Meet lots of people that humble me with their kindness and generosity.
One of the most impressive was a woman who worked at the Memory Care we ended up having to place my mother-in-law in after two years with us became unmanageable.
She was originally from Germany. Not sure when she came here, but late 50’s and had adult children both here and back in Germany. Husband with some health issues. She was the full time staff and activity director and daily presence for the locked unit with maybe 20-30 residents.
She had a 100% loving and generous heart. Never showed frustration or a hint of tension when managing and entertaining a wide spectrum of personalities riddled with dementia. She treated them with dignity and respect. Made them smile and feel love. And, extended it to the families. She clearly knew and empathized with how painful and guilt inducing for a child to have to make the decision to place parent in a “home”. So she went out of her way to tend to my wife and me every time we visited.
I’m sure she had her own life and strife, but she never once let it bleed into our observations or interactions.
To this point, while not everyone was as charitable with their effort, many more staff than not showed love and compassion and joy in what they did. Many were foreign born, whether Filipino or Caribbean, etc. This is not a glorious job. Work ethic, appreciation for their job and respect of their elders was quite evident.
We still thank all of them for the time and love they showed my MIL.
I can think of a few. One that comes to mind is the former president of my former tri club. He was a doctor in some kind of pediatric role within the hospital system, so he worked insane hours including nights. Yet somehow he found multiple extra hours every week to run the club, including stuff like being out at 4am to set up race courses for club events etc. I could not for the life of me imagine how he did it. All of that is just back story, though.
I went to a special screening at a local theatre as a fund raiser for a childrens’ medical research charity. The organiser for the charity stood up to thank us for coming and tell us how much they were raising and the good things they were achieving.
Same. fucking. guy. Some people, good people, somehow find the time to do good things for others.
A good friend of mine with terrible taste in women married a woman way too fast with a young daughter, I think 6 or 8 at the time. After about a year of marriage and on April 1st, no less, she announced that she was moving to Vegas to become a star (yeah, it makes no sense but it really fits). She intended to leave the girl with Steve to finish the school year then have the girl come out in the summer. Steve thought maybe she would stop being crazy and goes along with the idea.
Cass goes out in June, less than 6 weeks later the mom says she can’t handle her and askes if she can come back to Ohio. Steve says yes as the rest of her family is here too. At this point the divorce is in progress. Steve delays the divorce so he can adopt Cass, get custody, and raise her as a single father.
Cass is grown now, a nurse, married with 3 kids. Somehow seems to have waltzed past her mom’s nonsense.
I have known plenty of super nice people but this one truly stuck out to me.
I was working for a mortgage banking/service company in the Raleigh, NC area in the early 90s. My first job out of college after I moved from NY to NC. The lady who sat next to me did the same job and had been doing it for a couple of years so helped train me and get settled in. She was a couple of years older than me and just a wonderful coworker and super nice person.
I had left my car at the office overnight one time. My then girlfriend (now wife) dropped me off at my office the following morning. At some point during the morning I realized I forgot to bring my car keys with me. I had an important appointment to attend to that afternoon so this was a big problem. I could not get in touch with my wife and she was going to be working crazy hours that day.
I let out an audible “Oh shit” and my coworker asked what was wrong. I told her I didn’t have my keys and can’t get in touch with my wife so I’m screwed.
I ate lunch in our breakroom and came back to my desk and my extra set of car keys that my wife had were sitting on my desk. I was thoroughly confused because the absolute only person besides me that knew of the situation was my coworker. So I asked her if she knew how my keys ended up on my desk. She told me she drove to my wife’s office on her lunch break and got them from my wife.
The kicker was that she had never met my wife, or knew where she worked, and I’m not sure she knew my wife’s name. Maybe I had mentioned my gf/wife’s first name at some point but we weren’t married yet so my coworker couldn’t have even asked for someone with my last name. I certainly never mentioned where she worked.
It was such an amazingly nice thing to do. When I asked “How?” she said don’t worry about it and that it felt like the right thing to do. I never knew how she figured out who and where my wife was but it was awesome! This was like 1993 so there was no internet or anything like that. My guess is that she asked our boss and maybe I had some contact info in my personnel file.
She ended up marrying another guy in the office who was almost as nice as she was. Funny thing was they both had the same last name so that worked out for her since she didn’t have to name change everything.
They are both pretty opinionated and strong-willed. They just weren’t compatible. He had been married three times in about 10-12 years and realized that he simply isn’t cut out for marriage.
My father always has a kind words for people he encounters. He lives alongside a highway and one day noticed a pickup pull over to the side of the road. It was an older truck, in poor shape, and it had a flat tire.
My dad went out to talk to the guy. The guy had a spare, but it was flat and in bad shape. He told my dad that he didn’t have any money to replace the tire as he had just moved back to the area. He asked my dad if he could leave it on his property while he figured out what he could do. He called his sister who came and picked him up.
My dad (around 80 years old) jacked up the guys truck, pulled the tire off and took it to a tire store. He asked if they had any used tires that would fit it, and they did. My dad paid them to mount and balance it, and took it back and put it on the truck.
Some time later the guy came back and realized what my dad had done. He started crying and thanked my dad for his kindness.
It made my dad’s day to be able to help someone who clearly needed it. There are many stories like this.
The parents of my best friends who lived across the street from the house I grew up in, especially the dad.
Their door (and their refrigerator) was always open to any kid in the neighborhood, day or night, no advance notice or explanations needed. If you had a question you couldn’t ask your parents or just needed a welcoming place to perch for a while, you made your way to their kitchen.
Several summers in a row, the dad drove his own 2 kids plus 4 additional tween/teens from Wisconsin to Colorado and back for adventures in the mountains, just because he thought it was better than us playing video games all day.
He worked as a prosecutor and elsewhere in the criminal justice system for the bulk of his career. When he retired, he surprised everyone by getting a divinity degree. When I asked him why he did that, he said “I’ve done everything I know to do as a lawyer to work for justice; this is another way to work at it.” He established and runs a prison ministry program now.
One of my wife’s co-workers, who she is good friends with, is battling cancer and her marriage seems to be hitting rock bottom. Husband also has chronic health conditions that aren’t going to get better, and he seems to have descended into a pretty bad mental state taking it out on her. They just got an eviction notice.
My wife told her she could come stay with us and I agreed that would be OK.
So maybe that makes us kind people. I doubt she’ll take us up on it, can’t see how her husband could even get by without her, and the invitation doesn’t extend to him.
Long time lurker but had to reply to this for my first post. 2 weeks ago my wife got runover by a jeep as she was walking across the gym parking lot. She suffered a broken right hip and a fractured left tibia. The next day when I made a clothing run to the house I discovered a friend of ours had installed a handicap ramp to our front door so she will be able to safely get in and out once she gets home.
He has done stuff like that for multiple people in the ten years I’ve known him. He’s kind of rough around the edges but one of the truly best people I know.
My wife. Too many acts of kindness, but here’s one recent example.
Neighbor’s kid during sophomore year of HS a couple of years ago was starting to slip (grades, attitude, etc.). His mom (my wife’s good friend) was stressing out about it. My wife knew the kid really liked pizza. So she casually made a deal w/the kid that if he did well (on a test, course grades, etc.) she’d treat him w/a pizza. That got the kid to give my wife updates on good progress and he turned stuff around over the next couple of years. Currently, he’s now midway through an Engineering program at VA Tech. My wife still orders a pizza for him on good news.
His mom is thrilled, and grateful, for my wife’s “interventions”.
That is awesome. I’ve met a number of people that are, as you described, rough around the edges but are really wonderful people. Thanks for sharing your story.
Somebody I knew in medical school completed ob/gyn training and then went to Yemen for 2-3 years. She was one of 2-3 ob/gyns board certified in the country I think. She had to where a head covering etc. Things go too hot for her to stay and she moved to Uganda and set up a maternity hospital about 25 years ago. It is still running training midwives etc. 5-10 years ago she came back to Canada because her kids were getting older etc. She splits her time now between Canada, Uganda
Thank you everyone for the kind words and messages.
We are truly blessed in that we are both retired. This hasn’t effected our income so we don’t have to figure out how to get by without a paycheck and I am able to be available 24-7.
Rehab place is great. I get to stay here with my wife and go to all the pt sessions so I can learn how to safely help her when we do get home.
She’s fairly young,63, and in good shape so rehab is going well. It may take 4-6 months but she is expected to make a full recovery.
Lots of positive stuff has come out of this from family and friends showing up to meeting new people and learning some new skills.
We have a friend who is in home hospice with only a few weeks left. I couldn’t visit her to tell her how much she has meant to me as she wasn’t up to visitors. While taking a break outside the hospital on a bench next to the patient load unload area I looked up and she was in a car 5 feet away. I helped get her in a wheelchair and up to her doctor’s office while he sister parked the car. Got to spend 10 minutes with her, hugged her and told her I loved her. That was the most profound thing that has happened but these last two weeks have been full of blessings.
Again, thank you for all those who contacted me thru this site. It is greatly appreciated
People can be such a messy mass of contradictions.
Hardcore Trumper friend and co-worker. The kind of MAGA dude that likes getting a rise out of normies. Her’s also kind of brusk, definitely veering into asshole territory on a frequent basis.
But he’s also one of the most generous and kindest and thoughtful people I know.
Following my father’s sudden death a few years ago, I inherited a truck from him. He was a smoker - and he smoked in the truck. A lot. My friend took it upon himself to de-smoke the interior. I didn’t ask. He offered and did it.
When my wife was in the hospital last winter for 10 days, he visited every few days. Brought food. Just sat with her and us. He just showed up the second day she was in the hospital and kept showing up.
Every fall, he brings my grandkids Trader Joe’s kringles, because Ezra once mentioned to him how much he loves them. This has been going on for a few years.
I could go on. We aren’t the only people who’ve been the beneficiaries of his largesse.
And yet, the MAGA assholery. Like I said, a mass of messy contradictions.
That is really nice. And it is a shame, because this describes many.
I do believe there are many good people at the core, but then there is some “thing” that feels overlooked or unappreciated that drives them to his warm emotional embrace. It doesn’t require deep thought to understand this. It interesting what that “thing” is, because it can be very different for different people.
I think the apparent contradiction comes down to being able to choose whom to be kind to, vs. being forced to be kind per some govt policy.
I mean your Trumper friend is kind to you, your wife, etc. because he likes you guys and chose to do that. If there’s some government policy mandating folks donate trucks or visit patients in hospitals - would your friend support that?
Lots of MAGA folks I know are MAGA because they don’t want this kind of “social kindness” forced on them whether it’s racial, gender, cultural, etc. etc.
