A generous woman decided to do something fun with her last wishes, offering her car to anyone who attended her funeral.
Before Diane Sweeney passed away, she told her nephew about her plan to give away her car in a raffle if she died. “I remember it clear as day. She said whoever comes to my funeral, I want them to have a chance to win my Volkswagen Beetle,” he said.
After she passed away, her nephew paid for an ad in the newspaper about the raffle. One of the people who responded to that ad was sixteen-year-old Gabrielle Bonham. At the funeral she experienced the life and kindness of Ms. Sweeney, who died without getting married or having kids. “It was very interesting not to know her and to see her life through her family’s eyes,” she said.
Image: Michael Kelly/Gabrielle Bonham
After filling out a raffle ticket she went home and heard nothing, thinking someone else had claimed the car. In reality, it was just taking a long time to organise the legal side of Sweeney’s estate. But after everything was finally settled, Bonham won the raffle.
She was on a trip when she got the call, describing herself as freezing with her jaw open. “I think that it’s cool to see something good happen and the affect that it makes on other people who weren’t directly involved in it. Just people wanting to do good things. It’s amazing.”
Ms Sweeney’s nephew said it went to the perfect person, a young woman in need of reliable transportation, at the beginning of her adult life, taking the keys from a woman who had finished hers.
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