Story highlights
- The mom posted on Reddit a video of her son singing
- Redditors overwhelmed her with their kindness
(CNN)Here's a reminder that people are kind and the internet can be a beautiful place.
One
of Angela McElhiney's prize possessions is a video of her son Nathan
singing "Wayfaring Stranger."
That video became even more precious when
he committed suicide in October -- a month and a day before his 16th
birthday.
"It's about someone going, basically, to heaven," she said.
Unfortunately,
the sound quality is not very good. The performance was held in a
gymnasium and you can hear a lot of shuffling and coughing in the
background.
"It was such a bad
recording and I just wanted to be able to hear him better," she said.
"Right now, I feel like it's very therapeutic because I feel like it's
the journey he's taking."
McElhiney
posted the video on Reddit and asked if anyone knew how she could fix
the audio. She thought she'd get a few tips or maybe links to companies
that could help.
Instead, her inbox was flooded with condolences, kind words and offers to help from audio engineers, movie sound editors.
"There were a lot of people who said 'I don't really know what I'm doing, but here's my best shot at it,'" she said.
Within the hour, she started getting remixed videos, like this one from a Redditor in the Netherlands.
Another, a musician on YouTube, made two versions of the song and worked until 2 a.m.
In all, McElhiney says she got about 20 new versions of the song and each one brought out something different.
"I never expected so much kindness and so many people taking time out of their day," she said.
The
first Christmas without Nathan has been hard for McElhiney and her
family and this has been a welcome distraction for her. She tried to
thank everyone who responded to her post, but fell behind when the
number of comments grew into the thousands.
"We can't express our gratitude enough," she said.
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