The Internet Gave This Grieving Mom a Touchingly Beautiful Christmas Present
The Internet, all too often, is a mean place, full of trolls and nasty commenters and cyber-bullying. But sometimes, it does something beautiful.
Angela McElhiney's son, Nathan, committed suicide just two months ago. One item she had to remember him by -- and his love of singing -- is a video of him singing "Wayfaring Stranger" at a school concert. But the video, taken on a phone, has poor audio. There's a great deal of coughing and talking in the background, and Nathan's voice is not very loud.
"It was such a bad recording and I just wanted to be able to hear him better," she said.
So Angela took to Reddit, asking if anyone had any tips on how she could improve the sound quality. She was hoping for, at most, some links to audio sites or maybe a tutorial video where she could learn to do it herself. But Redditors flooded her inbox with well-wishing and offers of condolences.
Best of all, people took the time to re-edit the video themselves
Here is the original video:
And here is a cleaned-up version she received:
The difference is stark -- but that's not the only video she received. More than 20 people sent her their best attempts at getting the best possible sound quality from that original phone recording. Here's another:
Angela was so pleasantly surprised by all the unexpected generosity. "I never expected so much kindness and so many people taking time out of their day," she said.