grumpy 82-year-old

This grumpy 82-year-old was scowling in the grocery store when a little girl in a shopping cart yelled at him, "Hi old person, it's my birthday." But although her mortified mom wanted to disappear, that 4-year-old had just picked out the one man in the entire store who needed her most. Six months earlier, Dan Peterson of Augusta, Georgia, had lost Mary, his beloved wife. He fell into a crushing depression, spending his days staring at squirrels from his porch and admitting he was really just waiting to die. He had not slept through a single night. On that September day in 2016, he was dragging himself down the aisles of a store he hated. Then Norah, out shopping for her birthday cupcakes, zeroed in on the saddest man in the building and demanded a hug. Dan melted, and minutes later, the girl tracked him down again in the bread aisle because she wanted a picture with her brand new friend. The two hugged like long-lost family, and the old man's lip began to quiver. He told her mom, "This is the first time for quite a while that I've been happy." The Woods started visiting Mr. Dan every Sunday, and her mother says that after months of sleepless nights, he slept soundly forward, insisting Norah healed him. Their friendship lasted his life, right up to her visit the very day before he passed away in 2020. And when his obituary was printed, listed right there among his surviving family was his dear friend, Norah Wood.