A Texas mom broke down in tears after seeing the tribute her son paid to her late husband, who died in 2020. According to Ashley Irwin, who goes by @just_your_average_mom online, the tears came after her son told her he was taking a trip to “Heaven” to visit his dad, Tyler, causing Irwin to get choked up as she went through the things he’d packed.
It all came out in a video from January 11, where Irwin recalled a recent conversation she'd had with her son Wyatt.
“Y’all know my son. He’s a hoot,” the mom of three said in the footage. “Before bed tonight, he said, ‘Mom, can you put my bag up?’”
Confused, Irwin asked, “Where ya going buddy?”
“I’ve got a big trip tomorrow,” Wyatt said.
First, the mom thought he might be talking about church.
“No, that’s going to have to wait, but He’ll [God] forgive me,” her son said.
Still confused, Irwin pressed again.
“Do you wanna tell me?” she asked him.
“I’m going to Heaven,” he told her. That’s why he needed his Marvel-themed gym bag for the trip.
After filling it with everything he’d need for his journey, he made Irwin promise not to “peek” at what he’d put inside.
Irwin started to cry as she explained she was about to break her promise to her son and open his bag on camera.
“Hopefully he’ll forgive me,” she said.
The first things she found were superhero masks and capes.
“I’m assuming he’s saving the world in Heaven,” she joked.
Then she found a whistle, her son’s two new baseball gloves (plus a ball), Nerf darts, and something else that made her cry even harder.
It was a bottle of her late husband’s cologne tucked into her son’s shoe — which is exactly how her husband would’ve packed his cologne if he were going on a trip.
Wyatt also packed his dad’s wallet, which is where Tyler told him to put any “important stuff” for safekeeping, and tucked inside was a new wallet Irwin had bought Wyatt for Christmas full of family photos.
“The craziest part is when Tyler and Wyatt would go on little trips, fishing trips or whatever kind of trips, they’d pack like that,” Irwin said. “And they would bring me back flowers that they’d picked and I promise you that tomorrow, he’ll do the same.”
The mom's video had people sobbing in the comments section.
“Your little boy is on a journey … he must have had a wonderful dad
two gloves … one each for dad and son. Prayers to you both,” wrote one commenter.
“I just want to hug you both! I’m crying like a baby!” another commenter wrote.
“Well I wasn’t expecting to cry tonight,” someone else added.
Other people shared their own experiences with grief.
“This is the sweetest thing ever made me cry,” one person wrote. “I wished we all could make visits to heaven I have a 18-year-old son up there I’d love to see.”
“I just lost my husband two months ago,” another commenter shared. “My kids do similar things. They grab his fishing gear and go fishing with daddy.”
“Both of my kids lost their dads. Our prayer every night is “now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the lord my soul to keep, may my daddy watch me through,'” someone else wrote.
In a follow-up video, Irwin said she was touched by all the commenters who shared their own stories of loss.
“I wish everyone could visit Heaven,” she explained in the video. “And to be clear, what he meant by that is that he goes to the top of their playset, cause it’s the closest to Heaven that he can get.”
Don’t mind me — I just have something in my eye. Now excuse me while I go grab a box of Kleenex.
