A little boy wanted to hug the pizza delivery driver goodbye, but he was not aware of how much it meant to him.
Lindsey Sheely from West Warwick in Rhode Island got more than she expected when she ordered food from her favorite restaurant, Wicked Good Pizza. After she had paid for the food that the pizza delivery driver had delivered to Lindsey and her family, her two-year-old son, Cohen, chose to run up to the pizza delivery driver to say goodbye.
The pizza delivery driver was on his way out of their house, but before he could leave, the little boy opened his arms and invited the man for a hug. The sweet episode was captured by a camera built into Lindsey's doorbell. After watching the video, she chose to share it on Facebook and Instagram.
"We thought it was so cute and funny. I hope it brings a smile to your face and warms your hearts, just like it did for us," she wrote as the caption for the video.
What Lindsey did not know was that the hug from Cohen actually had much greater significance for the pizza delivery driver than she had anticipated. After sharing the video, she received a message from a man named Ryan Catterson. He wrote that he had seen the cute video and that he was the pizza delivery driver. He also asked if he could share the video on Facebook.
This led Lindsey to take a look at his profile on the social media platform, where she discovered that he had shared a fundraiser to cover the expenses for his 16-year-old daughter Alyssa's funeral. Unfortunately, Ryan and his family had lost the young girl unexpectedly just a week earlier.
"After losing my daughter the week before, it hit me because it felt like she was there. It really meant a lot to me," Ryan told WLNE media.
Lindsey then realized how much the little hug from Cohen had meant, which led her to call it 'a little blessing from God.'
"I believe in divine intervention and know that Ryan was the one who delivered our pizza for a reason," she said.
And Ryan explained that he agreed and that it was 'perfect timing,' as he had been talking to his family about needing a hug.
"It was perfect timing. I had told my kids and my whole family how much I needed hugs before they came, and then this little cute boy gave me one. It was almost as if the universe or my daughter had sent it to me," he told NBC 10 News.
To help Ryan and his family with the fundraiser, Lindsey chose to update her post with a link to it.
"I couldn't believe that this guy was going through the most terrible thing, but his life had to go on. He still had to work and do his job," she said.
"You never know what people are going through. This is a good example of that."
Watch this toddler give a grieving fater a surprise hug in the video below
