The cereal bowl nearly slipped from my hands when Principal Brennan called.<\/p>\n
\u201cSix men came to the school asking for Letty.\u201d<\/p>\n
My husband, Jonathan, had died only three months earlier, so panic immediately took over.<\/p>\n
When I arrived, I found my daughter sitting beside her classmate Millie, who was wearing the wig Letty\u2019s donated hair had helped create.<\/p>\n
But something else caught my attention.<\/p>\n
On the principal\u2019s desk sat Jonathan\u2019s old yellow construction helmet\u2014the one Letty had decorated with a tiny purple star when she was six.<\/p>\n
Standing beside it were several of Jonathan\u2019s former coworkers.<\/p>\n
His supervisor, Marcus, explained why they had come.<\/p>\n
While Jonathan was battling cancer, he had secretly started a fund called the \u201cKeep Going Fund\u201d to help families struggling with medical expenses.<\/p>\n
His coworkers had continued it after his death.<\/p>\n
Marcus placed a check in front of Millie\u2019s mother.<\/p>\n
She hesitated, ashamed to accept it.<\/p>\n
I gently told her, \u201cThis is exactly what Jonathan would have wanted.\u201d<\/p>\n
Then Marcus handed me an envelope.<\/p>\n
It contained a letter from my husband.<\/p>\n
Jonathan had written that he knew I would try to handle everything alone\u2014but he wanted me to let people help us after he was gone.<\/p>\n
His coworkers had promised him they would look after us.<\/p>\n
Before leaving, I also learned that Millie had been eating lunch alone in the nurse\u2019s bathroom to avoid the students who bullied her.<\/p>\n
The school had already begun investigating.<\/p>\n
That evening, I invited Millie and her mother to dinner.<\/p>\n
On the drive home, Letty held her father\u2019s yellow helmet in her lap.<\/p>\n
\u201cDo you think Dad would have cried if he saw what I did?\u201d she asked.<\/p>\n
I smiled.<\/p>\n
\u201cOh, absolutely. And then he would have blamed the dust.\u201d<\/p>\n
She laughed and touched the little purple star.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The cereal bowl nearly slipped from my hands when Principal Brennan called. \u201cSix men came to the school asking for Letty.\u201d My husband, Jonathan, had died only three months earlier, so panic immediately took over. When I arrived, I found my daughter sitting beside her classmate Millie, who was wearing the wig Letty\u2019s donated hair…<\/p>\n