Over the weekend, Texas grandmother Josie Reza celebrated her 85th birthday with a picture of her late husband in hand, and the emotional photos from her party now have the people of the Internet in tears.
The young woman who tweeted the now-viral photos is Reza's granddaughter, 18-year-old Alicia Salas. She told the Huffington Post that her grandfather — Reza's husband — passed away seven years ago, and his death was "really difficult" for Reza. "She talks about him all the time," Salas said.
Salas explained that, on the last birthday Reza was able to celebrate with her husband, he surprised her with a performance from a mariachi band. Reza's family hasn't hired a mariachi band since then, but they decided they would for her 85th birthday this year. They hoped the performance would make her happy and serve as a way to fondly remember her late husband — and that's just what it did.
"As soon as she saw the mariachi, she pulled my uncle aside and asked him to get a portrait of grandpa from inside the house," Salas told the Huffington Post. "She was holding it close to her the whole time."
The resulting photos struck a chord with Twitter users — they've already been retweeted nearly 20,000 times and favorited nearly 60,000 times. And when you see them (and all of the emotion in Reza's face), it's easy to see why.
"It was a happy moment for her," Salas told the Huffington Post. "She was crying. We were all tearing up." Us too, Alicia. Us too.
[h/t Huffington Post
Heather Finn is the content strategy editor at Good Housekeeping, where she heads up the brand's social media strategy and covers entertainment news on everything from ABC's 'The Good Doctor' to Netflix's latest true crime documentaries.
