Tough 6′4″ man on plane reduced to tears when kid traveling alone shares story about her grandma's song
Even the people who look the toughest can have a soft heart. Qualities of empathy, kindness and love can dwell in the hearts of those you expect the least. A weightlifter, Mike Farr, was not ashamed to share that he was moved to tears after a heartfelt conversation with a little kid. The man posted about his exchange with the little girl on an airplane about her grandma’s song. Something unexpectedly heartbreaking had Farr, a tough and firm guy, fighting back tears. The man mentioned that he was flying from San Francisco to Fort Wayne. Across his aisle was a little girl, traveling alone.
The weightlifter assumed she was “maybe visiting her grandparents or being shuttled from one divorced parent to the other.” Farr didn’t make much of the event and requested two bottles of water as per his need. “Without missing a beat, the kid gets a mischievous grin on her face and pipes up, ‘And I'll have two Cokes, please.’ The row behind her on the plane cracks up. The flight attendant glances back at me and quips, ‘See what you started?’ The kid beams,” he wrote. Farr later made conversation with the girl, only to discover something heartbreaking.
The girl was singing a tune to herself when the man asked her what it was about. Glad to converse, the kid responded, "Well, Grandma’s always surprised when I visit by plane. You know, how far you can come and how fast. I don't think they had many planes when she was little. I mean, seriously, they had a horse.” Continuing, the girl said, “Anyway, Grandma would tell me that she'd think of me from time to time and say to herself, ‘I wonder where you are. I wonder where you are going.’ Then she’d always add, ‘Someplace important, I'm sure!’ I made it into a song for us. I love my Grandma.”
The girl added that as she was going to her grandma’s place and thinking of her, she couldn’t help but start humming the song on the flight. Farr extended the conversation by asking whether the girl’s parents would also come to visit the grandma. "Oh, everyone will be there and Mom’s been out for two weeks already, making arrangements,” the girl said. Farr learned that the grandma had passed away and the arrangements were being made for her funeral. After learning the truth about the little girl's grandma, he couldn't hold back tears. “It was like being hit in the gut. In retrospect, maybe I should have seen it coming. A huge frog takes up residence in my throat and I realize she’s been singing, ‘I wonder where you are,’ about her Grandma who’s gone,” Farr recalled.
Farr’s heart broke for the little girl who had lost someone so dear to her and the words of the song added to the sentiment. Despite the news, the girl patted the distressed Farr on his arm and remarked, "Don't feel sad. Grandma lived a long and happy life and at the end, she was getting pretty tired." “A little girl with a brave smile waving goodbye to a 6′4″, 259lb brute trying desperately not to cry like, well, a little girl,” Farr poignantly recalled. This invaluable encounter and the girl’s strength and smile remained with Farr and had a powerful impact on him. “Sometimes, when I see a family at the supermarket or ice cream stand I’ll think of that kid and start humming her song. I wonder where you are. I wonder where you’re going. Some place important, I'm sure,” he concluded his post.