As the year draws close and the Christmas spirit of giving and gifting is in the air, there arise many stories of random acts of kindness displayed by people.
For most kids, Christmas Eve is one of the most exciting nights of the year. Between the sugar rush from cookies, the anticipation of Santa, and all of the traditions that make Christmas special, December 24th has a special place in a kid’s heart.
As a boy, John Dorrah knew this night to be one where his mother, Sue, would slip off for a few hours, saying she had a couple of errands to run. He never knew where she went.
John remembers being confused by his mother disappearing. She was the sort of person who would get all her Christmas shopping done by Thanksgiving. He just couldn’t put his finger on what she would possibly need to do on such a busy day of the year.
John never got a real answer out of her. “Maybe she had gone out to get that telescope that I wanted,” he would ponder.
For the rest of her life, John’s mother, Sue, would continue this bizarre Christmas Eve errand run, and John still had no idea where she was going.
When his mother passed away in 1990, John Dorrah received a letter from a man he had never met before called Robert. Robert knew exactly where “Miss Sue” had been spending hours of her Christmas Eve each year.
Robert used to work with John’s mother, and he held the answer to the secret she’d been keeping. It turned out Sue Dorrah wasn’t just an amazing mother— she was a bona fide Mrs. Claus!
The letter read as follows:
“Dear Johnny, I just wanted you to know how much my family and I appreciate what your mother has done for us for all of these years. Every year on Christmas Eve day your mom comes to my house dressed like Mrs. Claus and gives my kids a Christmas that we can’t afford to give them. She has given them shoes, shirts, jeans, toys, and candy.”
“I know your heart is heavy and that you are missing Miss Sue. We do, too. We loved her and just wanted you to know what she has done for us. Love, Robert and Nellie and the kids.”
After all those years, John finally discovered his mother’s secret.
The sweet woman had dedicated three hours of every Christmas Eve to create joy in the lives of a family who needed it.
Unlike most people these days, Sue felt no need to be praised for her actions or to make her good deeds known. The smiles of joy on the children’s faces had always been payment enough for her.
Although Sue had preferred to keep her actions private, John recently shared the good deed in his short story “Mom’s Secret Mission”, published in the book Chicken Soup for the Soul: The Joy of Christmas.
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Source: AWM