real life

A family befriended their elderly neighbour. When he died, he left a parting gift.

When Owen Williams and his wife moved to Barry, Wales, three years ago, they befriended their elderly neighbour Ken Watson.

One year later, they gave birth to their daughter Cadi, and the 80-something neighbour became a grandfather figure for the toddler.

In October this year, when Cadi was two, Ken passed away.

Days after his death, Ken’s daughter arrived at the neighbour’s home with a huge sack of presents: one for Cadi every year until her 16th birthday in 2032.

“I kept reaching into the bag and pulling out more presents,” Williams told The Washington Post. “You could have knocked me over with a feather. It was quite something.”

He posted about the experience on Twitter, expressing that he wasn’t sure whether to unwrap and rewrap the gifts as to find age appropriate ones for each year, or whether to give Cadi a mystery gift each birthday or Christmas.

“Our elderly neighbour passed away recently. His daughter popped round a few moments ago clutching a large plastic sack. In the sack were all the Christmas presents he’d bought for *our* daughter for the next thirteen years,” he wrote in the tweet.

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“I miscounted. It’s fourteen gifts. He always told us he’d live till he was 100-years-old, so these gifts would have taken him up to our little girl’s 16th Christmas,” he wrote in the tweet.

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“My wife and I think it might make a nice Christmas tradition to give our daughter “a present from Ken” for the next 14 years. Issue is, we really have to open them now. Nobody wants to give a fifteen-year-old Duplo!” he added.

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The story was adored by people around the world, and Twitter users weighed in on whether they thought the parents should unwrap them, or give her one per year.

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The couple confirmed that they were going to keep the presents wrapped up, as to maintain the specialness of the gifts.

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But temptation overcame them, and they opened just one gift.

Inside was a book titled Christmas Eve at the Mellops.

Does it get any more wholesome than this?

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