Last month, my dad passed away after a long and courageous battle with stage IV colon cancer. My mom, who was his primary caretaker, was left with thousands of dollars worth of bills. She had his chemo, radiation, surgery, and hospitalization bills. If you live in the U.S., you KNOW how expensive those bills are. She had to pay for his cremation and memorial. She assumed the mortgage, car insurance, phone bills, and all other expenses that my dad used to help pay for, as he was the primary breadwinner until he couldn’t work anymore.

My sister and I try to help as much as we can, but I’m a college student working part time and don’t have much to offer, and my sister is only working part time now as well.

Our community rallied together (without ANY of us requesting financial support) and about 150 friends, family members, and even strangers, raised enough to completely offset ALL of my mom’s bills. I mean, it exceeded the fundraiser my best friend set up for my family by over 4x the original amount.

Not only that, but our community showed their love in ways we couldn’t have possibly imagined. We received 4 vases of flowers, more food than we had room in our fridge for, my best friend gifted me a huge craft crate with over 15 different activities to keep my mind distracted, one of my dad’s childhood friends helped repair a water leak (it took days because he also had to patch up the wall) and refused to accept payment, my dad’s best friend who also has stage IV cancer will be gutting our basement soon and won’t take no for an answer, my neighbor cut our grass and trimmed our bushes, and we’ve received countless cards of love, encouragement, and support.

If you need a reminder that there is still so much good in this world, let this post be it. No amount of gratitude could ever express what my family truly feels.