Sometimes Christmas miracles happen where you least expect them: on Reddit. Angela McElhiney, who lost her 15-year-old son Nathan to suicide in October, was desperate to fix the sound quality on a video she has of him singing "Wayfaring Stranger."
The song is particularly meaningful to her now, because "it's about someone going, basically, to heaven," she told CNN."It was such a bad recording and I just wanted to be able to hear him better. Right now, I feel like it's very therapeutic because I feel like it's the journey he's taking."
Here is the original video:
Nathan, a straight A student with Broadway aspirations, has a beautiful voice. But the performance was held in a school gymnasium so there is a lot of distracting background noise.
McElhiney posted the video on Reddit and asked if anyone could help her fix the audio.
The grieving mother got way more help than she ever imagined.
McElhiney said her inbox was soon flooded with messages from audio engineers and movie sound editors offering to help, as well as messages of condolence and support from kind strangers.
She received about 20 remixed version of the video, including this one from a Redditor in the Netherlands:
And this one from a musician who stayed up until 2 am working on two versions of the video:
This is the family's first Christmas without Nathan, and McElhiney said watching and listening to the remixed videos has provided a welcome distraction.
"I never expected so much kindness and so many people taking time out of their day," she said. "We can't express our gratitude enough."
Go hug the internet today.