Brighten Your Day

My husband passed away this spring, after a long struggle with heart disease. We had wonderful hospice care near the end, and they ordered a hospital bed for the family room because he was too weak to come upstairs.

Mt. Lebanon has a Freebo group where members give away or lend things they no longer need. I asked if anyone had a baby monitor that I could borrow. One woman did, and she came over and showed me how to use it. I had never met her before.

The baby monitor brought me so much comfort in the last weeks of my husband's life because I was able to go to sleep listening to his breathing and hear his voice when he called out to me in the morning.

When he passed, I thanked the woman who had lent me the monitor, and she told me to leave it on the front porch.

The afternoon she was to pick it up, my doorbell rang and there she was with a plant, a container of soup, a pasta dinner and a large chicken salad. I was overwhelmed.

She was basically a stranger to me, and her act of generosity brought tears to my eyes. I will never forget her kindness during a difficult time.