Ever since her son Tyler died in 2015, Toni Wilson-Taylor, has found a way to honor her son.
This year, she wanted to do something special to celebrate what would have been her son’s 35th birthday. So while purchasing him a birthday cake, something her family does every year, she also paid for a stranger’s cake.
And in doing so she may have given herself an idea for a new tradition, not only for herself, but for the stranger who received the cake as well.
Tyler Wilson was 29 years old and nearly finished with his residency program at the Franciscan Health Family Medicine Residency program in Plainfield, Indiana, when he suddenly died.
Every year since his death in 2015, his family has remembered him.
One year his parents got Captain America tattoos, another year they scattered his ashes in various locations around the US, and last year Toni and Tyler’s sister sewed masks and donated them to frontline workers in his memory.
This year, Toni decided to honor Tyler by paying it forward. When she purchased a birthday cake to celebrate her son’s 5th heavenly birthday, she also paid for a stranger’s cake.
She also left a note explaining her act of kindness and requesting the recipient of the cake “make special memories and hug your children and loved ones tight.”
Carolyn Mick was the lucky recipient of the cake and she immediately took the Facebook to thank the person she only knew as “Toni, Tyler’s mom.”
“This means so much that my husband and I cried together,” she wrote on Facebook.
It didn’t take long before word got back to Toni, who shared that she was “so overwhelmed with emotion.”
Toni was so moved by the response not only from Carolyn, but from strangers leaving comments that she is going to consider purchasing a cake for someone on her son’s birthday a new tradition.
“I thought I was doing something so small and insignificant the other day, just asking God that Tyler knew I did something for him like that, not expecting it to touch so many lives in such a positive way,” she told WTHR.
Carolyn, who was using the cake for her 50th birthday celebration with friends and family, said she wants to do something similar to honor her mother who recently died.
This makes me so happy!
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