A woman nearing seventy steps into a clothing shop.
Her hair is unkempt, her clothes worn, her sandals scuffed.
In her hands, she clutches a crumpled plastic bag, her face etched with exhaustion.
The moment she enters, two shop assistants exchange sidelong glances.
“She won’t buy anything…”
“Probably just browsing.”
In a quiet voice, the woman asks if they have party dresses.
The assistants glance at each other, and one replies,
“What would you need a dress like that for? We sell elegant things here.”
The woman doesn’t answer. She just looks down.
But instead of leaving, she keeps browsing the racks…
Then, suddenly, she picks out a red dress. She presses it to her chest and smiles.
“This one’s perfect,” she says.
The assistants watch with smirks until one steps forward.
“That dress costs over three hundred pounds… Can you pay for it?”
The woman pulls an old envelope from her bag.
She empties it onto the counter.
Notes, coins, some crumpled… others grubby.
But there it is—the exact amount.
The assistants fall silent.
“Who’s the dress for?” one asks, her tone softer now.
The woman’s eyes shimmer as she answers,
“For my daughter.”
“Today’s her eighteenth birthday.”
“I had her when I’d given up hope of being a mother.”
“The doctors said I couldn’t… but God blessed me with her.”
“She passed two months ago, but I promised… on her special day, I’d bring her the dress she loved most.”
“And this… this was the one she wanted.”
“She showed me a picture of it before she left.”
Sometimes we judge people without knowing what they carry in their hearts.
And when we only see appearances… we risk missing what truly matters:
The love someone still gives, even when there’s no one left to receive it.
