What gesture of kindness made the biggest impact on you, and why?

12 comments

1. I’m a firefighter. First call I tagged along to was a deadly car crash. The amount of subtle care from colleagues without turning it into a big thing was so great. Made me know for sure this is what I want to be part of.

2. My husband.

   When I was on chemotherapy, he laid on the bathroom floor with me every night for almost a year, holding and rocking me in his arms while I shivered from endless vomiting. When I had surgery, the shirt I’d worn to the hospital still wasn’t loose enough to fit over all the tubes and wires, so my husband LITERALLY gave me the shirt off his back. And when we were discharged from the hospital, he trekked out to and across the parking lot to retrieve the car, with no shirt on, in the middle of winter. When I was confined to a wheelchair, he learned to take apart and put back together every screw and nail of my wheelchair, so we’d never be stranded or waiting on insurance bureaucracy for repairs (it helps that his background is in mechanical engineering, definitely had/has the skills for it).

   I had crappy parents, and a crappy childhood. My husband has shown me what it truly means to care for and about someone during their time of need.

3. When my partner and I first started dating, he stayed up and stroked my head all night until he had to leave. This was precious because I really hadn’t had a dating experience where I didn’t feel pressured to have sex. The simple act of him staying next to me without expecting anything made me feel safe.

4. In the 80’s I worked in the box office of a drive in theater. Literally a box outside, lol. I was 8 months pregnant and miserable. The security guards knocked on my door and did the “You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling” scene from Top Gun. I can’t explain why it meant a lot to me but almost 40 years later it makes me smile.

5. This is going to sound ridiculous, but I helped a person when i was younger and I saw what a difference it did to her and her family. Since then I’ve dedicated my life to helping, if i can, just because i know what its like to not have anything or anyone to get help from. So shortly, this person showed me how nice it is to help someone in need.

6. I was sick for days, like unable to do anything and stayed in bed in the dark. I had no more medication and my drugstore doesn’t deliver half of the week. I asked my friend and roommate to call my parents who are familiar with it to pick it up and drop it off. He offered to go himself, on foot during winter ( and he hates the cold). My parents used to be unpleasant when I asked for any help when living with them, he came back all sweet and just worried how I was. He did 2 drugstores to find it. We’ve been together 2 years.

7. I had lost my job and was crying upstairs in my thin walled apartment. I hear a knock on my door and it’s my downstairs neighbor who is a much older lady. Without saying a word, when I open the door, she just hugs me. And I continued to cry. I still very much so appreciate receiving that hug in my time of stress and am grateful she came upstairs to be kind to me. I really needed that hug.

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9. My partner.

   My mom has a mitochondrial illness, and isn’t doing well. My sister and I might have it, but don’t actually know yet.

   Since my mother’s condition affects her entire body, she got us checked too. On that specific day, a little over a year ago (I was 17) we were visiting a cardiologist. They attached these small machines to my and my sister’s chests which would then record our heartbeats for the following 24 hours, and we also had to write down our daily activities so they could see if everything’s okay. My partner was staying over, and he tagged along for the doctor’s visit, so he knew what was up.

   The weather was insanely hot. I was sweating, and all I wanted to do was take a shower and wash my hair. But I knew that the recorder couldn’t touch water. I was pissed, I was frustrated, at that point I was so tired of the situation itself that I told my boyfriend if it turns out I have my mother’s condition too, I’d rather end myself than let the illness make me miserable. I knew it hurt him, and he did let me know that he was frustrated, but didn’t raise his voice and he tried to calm me down.

   We went up to the apartment. A few hours later I wanted to try and take a shower. He helped. He got in the bathroom with me, took the shower head and helped me wash my body in a way that wouldn’t get the recorder wet. Then he helped me wash my hair too. And then dry me with a towel. At that point I was crying.

   When we got out, I thanked him and cried. All he said in a mocking way yet the cutest tone was “cause the lady wanted to wash her hair huh”.

   I’ll never forget that one.

10. I came back to work after a bereavement and a few people had sent me notes, and some of them said ‘please don’t feel the need to reply’. That was actually really helpful, cos you normally feel the need to say something like ‘oh yeah thank you I’m fine’ etc, so being able to hear the sentiment and not have to say anything back was really nice

11. I was driving alone with my dog down a rural highway and rolled my vehicle. The woman in the oncoming vehicle pulled over and was just really calm and stayed with me the entire time until the cops and ambulance arrived, even though she told me later she was terrified of what she was going to see when she walked up to the suv. She managed to get my dog out of my vehicle and brought her to sit by me.

    When the paramedics arrived and loaded me into the ambulance, the police officer told me he would take my dog to the shelter and I could pick her up when I got out of the hospital. I started crying and asking him to let her ride in the ambulance with me, they wouldn’t allow it.

    The woman took my dog home with her, fed her, sent me pictures of her cozied up on a dog bed, and then brought her back to me the next day when I was out of the hospital.

    I’ll never forget that level of kindness.

12. Some of these stories are amazing! I’ll share my less interesting one:

    Going from a grocery store to my car in the rain. I’m trying to balance carrying my infant, two bags of groceries, keep an umbrella over everything, and open my trunk. This middle aged, bearded, longhaired behemoth of a man comes sprinting through the rain over to us without an umbrella of his own.

    He opens my trunk, holds the umbrella over baby and myself, while I load the groceries. Afterwards, he handed me the umbrella back and says “when she gets bigger, tell her an old hippie helped you!” before sprinting away again.