Touching Story Thread

[PCP777]

Post all your touching tear jerking stories here.....

This is a good one....


        Two  Choices 

What  would you do?....you make the choice. Don't look for a  punch line, there isn't one. Read it anyway. My  question is: Would you have made the same  choice?

At a fundraising dinner for a school  that serves children with learning disabilities, the  father of one of the students
delivered a speech  that would never be forgotten by all who attended.  After extolling the school and its

dedicated  staff, he offered a question:

'When not  interfered with by outside influences, everything  nature does, is done with perfection.

Yet my  son, Shay, cannot learn things as other children do. 

He cannot understand things as other children  do. Where is the natural order of things in my  son?'

The audience was stilled by the query. 

The father continued. 'I believe that when a  child like Shay, who was mentally and physically  disabled comes into the world, an opportunity to  realize true human nature presents itself, and it  comes in the way other people treat that  child.' 

Then he  told the following  story:

Shay and  I had walked past a park where some boys Shay knew  were playing baseball. 

Shay  asked, 'Do you think they'll let me play?' 

I knew  that most of the boys would not want someone like Shay  on their team, but as a father I also  understood that if my son were allowed to play, it  would give him a much-needed sense of belonging and  some confidence to be accepted by others in spite of  his  handicaps.

I  approached one of the boys on the field and asked (not  expecting much) if Shay could play. 

The boy  looked around for guidance and said, 'We're losing by  six runs and the game is in the eighth inning. 

I guess  he can be on our team and we'll try to put him in to  bat in the ninth inning.' 

Shay  struggled over to the team's bench  and,
with a  broad smile, put on a team shirt. 

I  watched with a small tear in my eye and warmth in my  heart. 

The boys  saw my joy at my son being accepted. 

In the  bottom of the eighth inning, Shay's team scored a few  runs but was still behind by three. 

In the  top of the ninth inning, Shay put on a glove and  played in the right field. Even though no hits came  his way, he was obviously ecstatic just to be in the  game and on the field, grinning from ear to ear as I  waved to him from the stands. 

In the  bottom of the ninth inning, Shay's team scored again. 

Now,  with two outs and the bases loaded, the potential  winning run was on base and Shay was scheduled to be  next at bat. 

At this  juncture, do they let Shay bat and give away their  chance to win the game? 

Surprisingly, Shay was  given the bat. Everyone knew that a hit was all but  impossible because Shay didn't even know how to hold  the bat  properly,
much  less connect with the  ball.

However,  as Shay stepped up to the 

plate,  the pitcher, recognizing that the other team was  putting winning aside for this moment in Shay's life,  moved in a few steps to lob the ball in softly so Shay  could at least make contact. 

The  first pitch came and Shay swung clumsily and missed. 

The  pitcher again took a few steps forward to toss the  ball softly towards Shay. 

As the  pitch came in, Shay swung at the ball and hit a slow  ground ball right back to the pitcher. 

The game  would now be over. 

The  pitcher picked up the soft grounder and could have  easily thrown the ball to the first baseman. 

Shay  would have been out and that would have been the end  of the  game.

Instead,  the pitcher threw the ball right over the first  baseman's head, out of reach of all team mates. 

Everyone  from the stands and both teams started yelling, 'Shay,  run to  first!


Run to  first!' 

Never in  his life had Shay ever run that far, but he made it to  first base. 

He  scampered down the baseline, wide-eyed and  startled.

Everyone  yelled, 'Run to second, run to second!' 

Catching  his breath, Shay awkwardly ran towards second,  gleaming and struggling to make it to the base. 

By the  time Shay rounded towards second base, the right  fielder had the ball ... the smallest guy on their  team who now had his first chance to be the hero for  his team. 

He could  have thrown the ball to the second-baseman for the  tag, but he understood the pitcher's intentions so he,  too, intentionally threw the ball high and far over  the third-baseman's head. 

Shay ran  toward third base deliriously as the runners ahead of  him circled the bases toward home. 

All were  screaming, 'Shay, Shay, Shay, all the Way Shay' 

Shay  reached third base because the opposing shortstop ran  to help  him
by  turning him in the direction of third base, and  shouted, 'Run to third! Shay, run to third!' 

As Shay  rounded third, the boys from both teams, and the  spectators, were on their feet screaming, 'Shay, run  home! Run home!' 

Shay ran  to home, stepped on the plate, and was cheered as the  hero who hit the grand slam and won the game for his  team 

'That  day', said the father softly with tears now rolling  down his face, 'the boys from both teams helped bring  a piece of true love and humanity into this  world'.

Shay  didn't make it to another summer. He died that winter,  having never forgotten being the hero and making me so  happy, and coming home and seeing his Mother tearfully  embrace her little hero of the  day!

AND NOW  A LITTLE FOOT NOTE TO THIS STORY: 

We all  send thousands of jokes through the e-mail without a  second thought, but when it comes to sending messages  about life choices, people hesitate. 

The
crude,  vulgar, and often obscene pass freely through  cyberspace, but public discussion about decency is too  often suppressed in our schools and  workplaces. 

If  you're thinking about forwarding this message, chances  are that you're probably sorting out the people in  your address book who aren't the 'appropriate' ones to  receive this type of message Well, the person who sent  you this believes that we all can make a difference. 

We all have thousands of opportunities every  single day to help realize the 'natural order of  things.'

So many seemingly trivial interact  ions between two people present us with a choice: 

Do we pass
along a little spark of love and  humanity or do we pass up those opportunities and  leave the world a little bit colder in the  process?

A wise man once said every society is  judged by how it treats it's least fortunate amongst  them.

You  now have two choices:
1.  Delete
2. Forward 

May  your day, be a Shay  Day 
 
   

[Soul of Nature]

PCP, that was a sweet story.

I'll have to share some sometime soon.

[Nocturnity]

The tale of a 70-year-old Chinese man who hand-carved over 6,000 stairs up a mountain for his 80-year-old wife has moved millions of people in 2006, Wednesday morning the man passed away in the cave, which has been the couple's home for the last 50 years.






The story began half a century ago when 20-year-old Liu Guojiang fell in love with widowed mother Xu Chaoqing.

In a twist worthy of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, friends and relatives criticized the relationship because of the age difference and the fact that Xu already had children.

Desperate to escape market gossip and the scorn of their communities, the pair eloped to live in a cave in Jiangjin County in southwest China's Chongqing Municipality.

Their story came atop a list of China's top ten love stories organized by the Chinese Women Weekly, which collected tales from around the country since July.

At the beginning, life was harsh and Xu felt that she had tied Liu down and repeatedly asked him, "Are you regretful?"

Liu always replied, "As long as we are industrious, life will improve."

Liu and his wife were not present at the award ceremony due to their age, but their son, Liu Mingsheng, came with a kerosene lamp that his father had made from an ink bottle.

"My parents have lived in seclusion for more than 50 years because of their love for each other. They had no electricity and my father made kerosene lamps to lighten our lives," he said.

"My mother seldom goes down the mountain, but my father cut the 6,000-plus stairs for her convenience," Liu said. "It's a ladder of love."

http://www.asianoffbeat.com/OddNews/Best-Love-Story-of-2007-2.jpg

[trailerparktrash]

Pcp, I'm seriously crying right now Ugh. I'm such a cry baby.

[PCP777]

[quote author=trailerparktrash link=topic=15201.msg933942#msg933942 date=1216302203]
Pcp, I'm seriously crying right now Ugh. I'm such a cry baby.
[/quote]

TPT, if that story doesn't move you, you're not even human.

Nocturnity, thanks, that's a cool story I never heard before.

[trailerparktrash]

This is one of my favourite stories It's quite long, but awesome.

http://entertainment.timesonline.co....cle2651472.ece

My love, I cannot live without you
French philosopher Andre Gorz wrote his terminally ill wife a moving letter before their joint suicide last month. Here we publish it in Britain for the first time

The joint suicide of André Gorz, the French philosopher and founder of the magazine Le Nouvel Observateur, and his British-born wife Dorine, who was suffering from a fatal disease, has turned the love letter that he wrote to her into a surprise bestseller.

Gorz, 84, a friend of Jean-Paul Sartre, and Dorine, 83, committed suicide by lethal injection at their home in the village of Vosnon, east of Paris, on September 22. Two days later a friend found them lying side-by-side in their bedroom.

Gorz’s 75-page Lettre Ã* D. Histoire d’un Amour (Letter to D. Story of a Love), published a year earlier, was a tribute to his wife. One French critic described the work, which won him a wider audience than his essays on ecology and anti-capitalism, as his “intellectual and emotional testamentâ€�.

The couple met by chance at a card game in 1947 and married in 1949. “You will soon be 82. You have shrunk six centimetres and you weigh just 45 kilos and you are still beautiful, gracious and desirable,� the book starts. “It is now 58 years that we have lived together and I love you more than ever.�

Gorz goes on to describe finding out in 1973 that Dorine, who managed foreign rights for the publisher Galilée, suffered from an incurable condition caused by the contrast agent lipiodol that was used for x-rays before a back operation that she underwent in 1965. Traces of the agent reached her skull and led to cysts in her cervix, painfully pressuring her nerves.

Two years later the couple learnt that she also suffered from another illness:

‘I took a photo of you, from behind: you are walking with your feet in the water on the beach of La Jolla. You are 52. You are amazing. It’s one of the images of you that I like best.

I looked at that photo for a long while after we got back home, when you told me you wondered if you didn’t have some sort of cancer. You’d already wondered that before we left for the United States but hadn’t wanted to say anything to me. Why not? ‘If I have to die, I wanted to see California beforehand,’ you told me calmly.

Your endometrial cancer hadn’t been picked up in your annual checkup. Once the diagnosis was made and the date of the operation set, we went to spend a week in the house you’d designed. I carved your name in the stone with a chisel. That house was magic. All the spaces had a trapezoidal shape. The bedroom windows looked out over the treetops.

The first night, we didn’t sleep. We were both listening to each other breathing. Then a nightingale started singing and a second one, further away, started answering. We said very little to each other. I spent the day digging and looked up from time to time at the bedroom window. You were standing there, motionless, staring into the distance. I am sure you were practising taming death in order to fight it without fear. You were so beautiful and so determined in your silence that I couldn’t imagine you giving up living.

I took time off from Le Nouvel Observateur and shared your room at the clinic. The first night, through the open window, I heard all of Schubert’s Ninth Symphony. It is etched in me, every note. I remember every moment spent at the clinic. Pierre, our doctor friend from the CNRS (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique), who came to hear your latest news every morning, said to me: ‘You are going through moments of exceptional intensity. You’ll remember this always.’ I wanted to know what chances the oncol-ogist gave you of surviving five years. Pierre brought me the answer: ‘50-50.’

When you came out of the clinic we went back to our house. Your spirit thrilled me and reassured me. You’d escaped death and life took on a new meaning and a new value. A friend immediately understood this when you saw him at a party. He stared into your eyes for a long time and he said to you: ‘You’ve seen the other side.’ I don’t know how you responded or what else you said. But these are the words he said to me, straight afterwards: ‘Those eyes! Now I understand what she means to you.’

You had seen ‘the other side’; you’d come back from the land no one comes back from. This changed your perspective. We made the same resolution without consulting each other. An English Romantic once summed it up in a sentence: ‘There is no wealth but life.’

During the months you were convalescing, I decided to take my retirement at 60. I started counting the weeks till I could pack up. I took pleasure in cooking, in tracking down organic produce that would help you get your strength back, in ordering the specially tailored medications that a homeopath had recommended you take.

Ecology became a way of life and a daily practice without ceasing to imply the requirement of a completely different civilisation. I’d reached the age where you ask yourself what you’ve done with your life, what you would like to have done with it. I had the impression of not having lived my life, of having always observed it at a distance, of having developed only one side of myself and being poor as a person. You were, and always had been, richer than I was. You’d blossomed and grown in every dimension. You were at home in your life; whereas I’d always been in a hurry to move on to the next task, as though our life would only really begin later.

I asked myself what was the inessential that I needed to give up in order to concentrate on the essential. I told myself that, to grasp the reach of the upheavals that were looming in every domain, there had to be more space and time for reflection than the full-time exercise of my profession as a journalist allowed.

I was amazed that my leaving the journal, after 20 years of collaboration, was neither painful to myself nor to others. I remember having written that, at the end of the day, only one thing was essential to me: to be with you. I can’t imagine continuing to write, if you no longer are. You are the essential without which all the rest, no matter how important it seems to me when you are there, loses its meaning and its importance.   I told you that in the dedication of my last work.

Twenty-three years have gone by since we went off to live in the country, first in ‘your’ house, which radiated a sense of meditative harmony. A harmony we enjoyed for only three years. They started building a nuclear power station nearby and that drove us away. We found another house, very old, cool in summer, warm in winter, with huge grounds. It was a place where you could be happy.

Where there was only a meadow you created a garden of hedges and shrubs. I planted 200 trees there. For a few years we still did a bit of travelling; but all the vibrating and jolting around involved in any means of transport, no matter what, triggers headaches and pain through your whole body. Arach-noiditis has forced you, little by little, to abandon most of your favourite activities. You hide your suffering. Our friends think you’re ‘in great shape’. You’ve never stopped encouraging me to write. Over the 23 years we’ve spent in our house, I’ve published six books and hundreds of articles and interviews.

We’ve had dozens of visitors from every corner of the globe and I’ve given dozens of interviews. I surely have not lived up to the resolution made 30 years ago: to live completely at home in the present, mindful above all of the richness that is our shared life. I’m now reliving the instants when I made that resolution with a sense of urgency. I don’t have any major work in the pipeline. I don’t want ‘to put off living till later’ - in Georges Bataille’s phrase – any longer.

I am as mindful of your presence now as in the early days and would like to make you feel that. You’ve given me all of your life and all of you; I’d like to be able to give you all of me in the time we have left.

You’ve just turned 82. You are still beautiful, graceful and desirable. We’ve lived together now for 58 years and I love you more than ever. Lately I’ve fallen in love with you all over again and I once more carry inside me a gnawing emptiness that can only be filled by your body snuggled up against mine.

At night I sometimes see the figure of a man, on an empty road in a deserted landscape, walking behind a hearse. I am that man. It’s you the hearse is carrying away. I don’t want to be there for your cremation; I don’t want to be given an urn with your ashes in it. I hear the voice of Kathleen Ferrier singing, ‘Die Welt ist leer, Ich will nicht leben mehr’ and I wake up. I check your breathing, my hand brushes over you.

Each of us would like not to survive the other’s death. We’ve often said to ourselves that if, by some miracle, we were to have a second life, we’d like to spend it together. ’

Extracted from Lettre Ã* D. Histoire d’un Amour by André Gorz. Translated by Julie Rose

[TheFavoriteDaughter]

The Shay one always makes me cry. The other ones too. 

[Nocturnity]

A store owner was tacking a sign above his door that read "Puppies for Sale." Signs like that have a way of attracting small children, and sure enough a little boy appeared under the store owner's sign. "How much are you going to sell the puppies for?" the little boy asked. The store owner replied, "anywhere from $30 to $50." The little boy reached into his pocket and pulled out some change. "I have $2.37" he said. "May I please look at them?" The store owner smiled and whistled and out of the kennel came Lady, who ran down the aisle of his store followed by five teeny, tiny balls of fur.

One puppy was lagging considerably behind. Immediately the little boy singled out the lagging, limping puppy and said, "What's wrong with that little dog?" The store owner explained that the veterinarian had examined the little puppy and had discovered that it didn't have a hip socket. It would always limp. It would always be lame. The little boy became excited. "That is the puppy I want to buy." The store owner said, "No, you don't want to buy that little dog. If you really want him, I'll just give him to you."

The little boy got quite upset. He looked straight into the store owner's eyes, pointing his finger, and said, "I don't want you to give him to me. That little dog is worth every bit as much as all the other dogs and I'll pay full price. In fact, I'll give you $2.37 now and 50 cents a month until I have him paid for."

The store owner countered, "You really don't want to buy this little dog. He is never going to be able to run and jump and play with you like the other puppies." To his surprise, the little boy reached down and rolled up his pant leg to reveal a badly twisted, crippled left leg supported by a big metal brace. He looked up at the store owner and softly replied, "Well, I don't run so well myself, and the little puppy will need someone who understands."

[Cap-n Meow]

One night I was cruising around my hometown with a friend.  I knowingly had expired plates but I didn't think much of it.  So of course I get pulled over.  The cop took my license and registration.  He started walking back to his car then stopped and came back.  He handed me my license and registration then told me I should probably get my plates renewed soon and sent me on my way.

I decide it's best if I don't drive around much more and go to my parents.  I walk in and my parents ask me why I got pulled over and asked if I got fined.  Being a small town, my parents had a police scanner at the time so they could hear all the gossip.  So I told them why I got pulled over and that the cop didn't give me a fine or even a warning. 

My mom, who is a nurse, told me that a few months prior the same cop had came in to the ER with his baby and wife.  The baby  was turning blue, limp, and not breathing.  My mom began CPR.  She said that CPR wasn't working, but she wouldn't stop and finally the baby took a breath.  Shortly after the baby had regained color and appeared to be back to normal.  So my mom thinks that the cop was just trying to repay her by letting me go.  At least I'd like to think so as it makes the story pleasant.

[Bama Star]

All of these stories 

Especially the Shay one, the puppy one & capnmeows.

Cap-n-Meow's because of this..
Not to say you shouldn't always be nice to everyone anyways but...
I'm a firm believer that you should always be nice to everyone because you never know when you'll need something from them.
And anytime I start to get angry about the way someone is treating me, I like to imagine a situation where they would need me.. usually makes me feel better.

[Bama Star]

A Full Box of Kisses

The story goes that some time ago, a man punished his 3-year-old daughter for wasting a roll of gold wrapping paper.Money was tight and he became infuriated when the child tried to decorate a box to put under the Christmas tree. Nevertheless, the little girl brought the gift to her father the next morning and said, "This is for you, Daddy." He was embarrassed by his earlier overreaction, but his anger flared again when he found the box was empty.

He yelled at her, "Don't you know that when you give someone a present, there's supposed to be something inside it?" The little girl looked up at him with tears in her eyes and said, "Oh, Daddy, it is not empty. I blew kisses into the box. All for you, Daddy." The father was crushed. He put his arms around his little girl, and he begged for her forgiveness.

It is told that the man kept that gold box by his bed for years and whenever he was discouraged, he would take out an imaginary kiss and remember the love of the child who had put it there.
In a very real sense, each of us as humans have been given a gold container filled with unconditional love and kisses from our children, friends, family or God. There is no more precious possession anyone could hold.