If you’ve ever had a special neighbor who made a difference in your life, then you know how nice it can be to have someone nearby who cares about you and your family. Besides being great friends, they also watch over our homes when we’re away and are a safe haven for our children. Growing up, I lived in a neighborhood with mostly older people and very few children. I would have enjoyed having other kids nearby to play, but looking back on it, I remember now how special it was to have these kindly elderly people there to smile at me every day when I stopped to smell the beautiful flowers they planted.
Ken Watson was a great neighbor and an interesting gentleman. As a younger man, he was known to once strap himself onto the wing of an airplane. As an older man, he learned to skydive at the age of 85. Getting older didn’t slow him down and he loved being unpredictable. In the end, he pulled off a stunt that no one was expecting and he kept it a secret for years. After his funeral, his daughter was sorting out his home when she discovered that he had a special stash of something that she didn’t expect. See, Ken had built a beautiful friendship with one of his neighbors, a two-year-old little girl named Cadi.
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When Ken’s daughter went up to Cadi’s door after clearing out her father’s house, Cadi’s dad Owen Wilson was surprised to see her, having no idea what she was doing there. However, Ken’s daughter had something and it belonged to Cadi. The friendship that Owen’s little girl had with the old man who was her neighbor was a genuinely special one and the little girl and her sharp mind made quite an impression on Ken. He wanted to make sure she never forgot him and he had the perfect plan to make sure that happened. Ken wrapped up 14 gifts for Cadi, one for every Christmas until she turned 16 years old.
When the Wilsons shared the story on Facebook, they explained that their elderly neighbor had passed away recently and the old man’s daughter came around to their home with a large plastic sack. Inside the sack were the 14 years of Christmas presents. The couple was naturally teary-eyed at the unexpected gift. And the gifts came with a rule: she could only open one per year. However, Ken didn’t label the books to let them know which year she should open the gifts. So they opened one of them, and it was a book. They don’t know what the other gifts are.
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It’s nice to know that there are some good neighbors left in the world. Watch this touching news story about the gifts below.
