5 Years 5 Random Acts of Kindness

So what do you do five years later...five years after getting the single most profound phone call of your life? Five years after learning what true agony is. For most, war is a distant and foreign thing. Not for me. War came into my home and changed my life forever.

I've spent the month of April this year similarly to the past few years. The change you feel in the air that shows a hint of spring changes something inside me. I sleep less. Significantly less; we are talking maybe a few hours a night. I find myself lost in thought often and contemplating things both big and small. I think about my entire childhood. I think about my family, my future children. I think about my faith. I think about my brother.

April 23rd comes around every year as do the other Dale-days throughout the year. There are a lot of them. This I am thankful for. I, as does my entire family, think about my brother every single day. It is a blessing to have as many memories as we do. Dale-days bring about some memories that have gotten fuzzy and an opportunity to talk about them with loved ones.

This year one thing that is different is the focus on starting our family. Hours have been spent combing through pictures and writing and re-writing words to our future birthmomma. There are times I am completely overwhelmed with emotion as I think about the uncle my children will never know; the fun they would have had and the lessons they would have learned from my only brother. This is what I've been contemplating a lot about this month.

Dale made people smile.

So, this is where I got my idea. I want to make people smile and I want to do it for him.

From this year forward I want to spend April 23rd focusing on making people smile. For every year that passes I want to do that many random acts of kindness.

This year is 5 years so 5 random acts of kindness were incorporated into my day. I didn't really have a plan going into today, so I just went with it as things came to mind.

1. I bought a couple of people a cup of coffee. After snagging an iced tea at a local drive-thru I left extra money and instructions with the barista to use the money towards the next few coffee orders she got. As I drove away, she was smiling.
2. Jake and I met up for a beer and on my way to the table I stopped at the bar. I left money and instruction to cover the next customer's happy hour and a relatively large tip for the waitress. As I was explaining my idea to the waitress, she was smiling...and she was really smiling as she told her next customer that her order was taken care of. And for the customer, she was smiling.
3. I gave away some jeans (that I love, but will probably never fit into again) to some teenagers who happen to love clothes...especially free ones. As one of the teens was running out the door, she was smiling.
4. I made cookies and took them to a neighbor I hadn't met yet. After sitting around and chatting and getting to know each other a bit, she was smiling.
5. I ran out of time today, but I plan on taking some more of the cookies I made, some tea, a handmade card and an envelope with postage to another neighbor. I want to share a little treat with her to have while writing a note to a friend and sending it to them in the mail. I'm pretty sure this will make her smile.

Today was still a hard day and tears were shed, but smiles were shared today too. The war continues, but today I did my best to show some kindness on behalf of and in memory of my brother.

Love you little brother. Semper fi.