Sometimes, an act of kindness can be as simple as having dinner with a lonely stranger. Which is precisely what three men did with an elderly woman at a Cracker Barrel in Texas recently, and a photo a fellow diner snapped has gone viral.
On Dec. 5, Claire Senglin Richardson, a registered nurse at Children's Memorial Hermann Hospital in Houston, Texas, posted a photo of the unlikely group with a very sweet caption. She wrote that she and her husband were at Cracker Barrel when they noticed "an elderly woman sitting all alone, drinking a milk and waiting for her meal."
Richardson said that she looked "so very lonely," so she immediately began to wonder where her family was and whether or not she was widowed. That's when three "big, burly, middle aged, blue-collar, hard-working, hungry men" sitting next to her asked the "frail elderly woman" to join their table.
"We continued to watch them interact," Richardson wrote. "The woman was smiling from ear to ear, her face all lit-up and she was just a-talking like she hadn’t talked to another human in a very long time. I seriously was choked up."
The post went viral, with more than 7,000 likes in just a few weeks, and then it made its way to the Love What Matters Facebook page, where it went touched even more hearts with more than 116,000 likes.
"There still is compassion for others, it's just not seen as often as it should be," one Facebook user wrote. "A huge thank you to these guys. I'm sure they made her evening."
But it gets better.
The elderly woman's granddaughter, Shana LeBlanc, came across the post and confirmed that the men did, in fact, do a very good deed for her Grandma Bobbie.
"These men made her day and knowing this little story has made 'the internet' has her tickled pink," LeBlanc wrote. "We all love our grandma and we are lucky and extremely blessed she is still in our lives."
LeBlanc added that "this past year has been a little rough on her as she ages," so it's heartwarming to see that strangers can be there for her when her family can't.
"It is hard to see her aging but it is easy to love her," she wrote. "She loves her grandkids and great-grandkids so much. And we all love her more than words can express. I truly love that there are kind people around loving her also when we can’t be with her."
LeBlanc also said she and her family will be heading to Grandma Bobbie's house for Christmas this week, and she also shared a few photos of her grandmother from now...
...and back in the day. Needless to say, she's an ageless beauty.
In the true spirt of the holidays, this small act of kindness is proof that you don't need to do much to have a big effect on someone.
