Spreading Kindness

Have you ever touched someone's life? Have you ever caused someone to smile and knew instantly that your heart was full?  Have you given without wanting anything in return, only to find that you did receive something in return, true joy?

Many years ago, my father began a tradition that was born with a simple and self-less gesture.  I noticed him one day in the workshop, making a variety of glass art designs and then carefully wrapping them and placing them in a box.

His plan?  To visit the local hospital on Christmas morning and walk from room to room giving patients a glass art suncatcher that they could take home with them after their health returned. To visit the lonely, the scared, the tired.  To bring joy where joy was needed. I knew immediately that I wanted to make the trip with him.

I remember noticing many of the small things on that first morning with him and my mother.  She, too, wanted to be a part of this lovely act of kindness.

I noticed that usually my dad would put his business card with all of the pieces he sold and that since he was not there to sell or to claim any credit, he left those cards at home and never talked about his business to anyone at the hospital.

I noticed he let the patients each choose their own design from the box of goodies.

I noticed the smiles and the tears and the thanksgiving and the conversations.

I noticed the nurses and the staff and how happy they seemed, as if for a few moments they could breath, take pause from their own stressful days and just smile with their patients and some strangers carrying a box of stained glass down the corridors!

My parents continued this tradition for many happy years together.

My father passed away in 1993 in the month of September.  We weren't really sure how our hearts would take on the holiday season after such an enormous and heavy loss to our family.

A week before Christmas that year, I asked my mother how she felt about our tradition and whether or not we could handle the range of emotions that would certainly descend upon us as we walked the hospital halls.  For a second, I wondered if I was doing the right thing by asking this. My mom, like my dad, was always a trooper and family was everything to the two of them.  And so she agreed, and we went.

I remember feeling very close to my dad that morning as my mom and I greeted patients and had them choose their favorite piece.  It was a beautiful change in the way we had been grieving, as if heaven itself was showering down new breath into our lungs, filling us with peace and relief.

I remember turning a corner, and looking down the particular corridor in front of me, and I completely froze.  It was the wing my dad had spent the last few days of his life in.  I have no idea what surge of bravery, (or self torture,) came over me in that moment, but I heard myself announce to my mom, "I want to give a suncatcher to whoever is in the room where dad passed."   My poor mom, a new widow, standing beside me so brave for even entering the building!  She took in a deep breath and said, "I'm right behind you."  God bless my mom!

In the very room where I last saw my dad alive, the room in which he passed from earth to heaven,  we saw a smiling woman, contently laying down and I believe she had a book in her lap.  She looked well.  Very well!  She welcomed us in and listened as we explained how we were stopping by with a gift for her to take home when she is discharged.  She told us that she was going home the next day and was very excited.  As we placed the box at the end of the bed, she peered into it. She knew immediately which piece was to be hers.  A bluebird.

My dad's favorite bird was..... the bluebird.

For the past three years I have carried on this tradition with my youngest daughter.  We will be there this Christmas morning. She never met her grandpa Jimmy, but she knows him. She knows him very well!

Thank you for supporting my business. It is allowing me to spread kindness.  It is allowing me to honor my father's heart.. and my moms.  It is a true blessing!