A 100-year-old granny received a heart-melting surprise on her birthday when her garbage man showed up at her front door with a birthday cake.
Ben Bird has worked as a garbage man in the Midlands, UK, for the last couple of years, and his job allowed him to make some friends in the neighborhood he works at.
Among so many other people, the closest he got to was Dorothy Ballard, a 99-year-old lady who lives in the same neighborhood Ben works in.
According to ITV, the duo had been friends for the last eight years and regularly met every Thursday to have a little chat with each other.
“Where’s my favorite lady?” Ben said he would ask whenever he visits her, and Dorothy (nickname: Mercy) would open the door to talk to her dear friend.
“I empty the bin, come back up, and then we have 10 minutes, don’t we, just to talk,” he told ITV News.
According to Ben, when Mercy told her how old she was, he promised to bring her a surprise cake on her 100th birthday.
“She told me her 100th birthday was coming up, so I thought I would keep my promise and surprise her as I said a few years ago. She told me she was in her late 90s, and I was like, ‘whoa, we will celebrate your 100 years on earth together,’” said Ben.
According to Ben, on Mercy’s birthday, he went to a local bakery and purchased a cute pink-colored cake for her and decorated it with candles so that she would feel young like a little girl.
On the morning of her birthday, when Mercy opened her door, she found Ben standing outside along with some of his colleagues and they all started singing the happy birthday song for her.
Upon seeing the surprise cake and people singing happy birthday for her, the 100-year-old became emotional and broke down into tears. The whole scene was recorded by one of Ben’s fellow garbage men.
The video was later posted online and received nearly 4 million views.
In the video, when Ben asked Mercy to blow out the candles and make a birthday wish, he requested that she should wish to live up to 105 years. To which she smiled and replied, “shut up.”
“There ain’t many young men that take interest in an old woman. He’s such a lovely lad,” Mercy Ballard told ITV News.
The centenarian also said that she received a birthday card from Queen Elizabeth as in the UK, when you reach the age of 100, you get a birthday card from the Queen.
“He literally made my day, I wasn’t expecting any of that. When he made this promise a couple of years ago, I thought he would forget about it within just a few hours as he is a young man full of life. But I couldn’t believe it when he showed up with the cake. It was wonderful,” said Mercy.
What are your views on Ben and Mercy’s touching story? Let us know in the comments.
What a fantastic story this is how a world should be people caring for each other regardless of age colour or anything god bless them both