Years earlier, Antonia and her dad had lost her mom to cancer.
They were married for 52 years! And, like soulmates, they had all kinds of fun together — but her mom couldn’t resist getting one last joke in on her dad.
As Antonia says, before she passed, her mom asked her dad to make sure he watered the plants in the bathroom.
It’s not the most glamorous duty, but sounds exactly the sort of thing a wife might ask her husband, right?
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And, like a good husband, he dutifully, religiously watered those plants in the bathroom for over four years.
It wasn’t until he moved to a new home and took the amazingly hearty plants with him that he finally got the joke.
The punchline? The plants were plastic. He’d been watering fake plants for four years.
No wonder they stayed so green and vibrant! And no wonder Antonia’s story went viral, people loved it!
You have to feel for the poor guy, don’t you?
Watering fake plants for four years to keep a dying wish is exactly the sort of thing I would do, too.
And he took it all in stride. Apparently Antonia’s mom’s sense of humor was one of his favorite things to remember.
It’s sure easy to appreciate!
But because this is the internet we’re talking about, and Twitter in particular, we can’t just have nice things.
It didn’t take long for trolls to come out of the woodwork, raining on Antonia’s story and harping on her for using a stock pic of a fake plant, and looking for other reasons to pick it apart. Using a stock pic with a story doesn’t make the story untrue, by the way.
And worse, some tried to pick on Antonia’s dad for not catching on to the joke sooner.
Okay, so he watered a fake plant for four years, what’s the big deal? One person asked where the water went, and apparently Antonia’s dad thought the toilet had a slow leak.
And as for her dad, well, is it too much to ask that Twitter cut the guy a little slack?
Grieving can do weird things to people. It’s a personal process. Frankly, he’s had a great sense of humor about it all.
And that’s just what Antonia’s mom left behind for them: humor, as Antonia recalled with another story.
“My daughter drew a picture of ‘naughty Granda'” jumping on the bed with Granny shocked. When my parents received the drawing, they recreated the scene and sent the photo back to my daughter. This sums up how my parents were before my mum lost her battle with cancer in 2013.”
Thankfully, not everyone out there took Antonia to task. She even received some thoughtful gifts after sharing so many personal stories that delighted people.
“We enjoyed your mother’s sense of humour and your story so much. Please enjoy these with our complements,” sent one well-wisher.
And honestly, we all wish her well after sharing so much joy with the world.
