Grandson posts powerful photo of grandmother online: She wanted to see the ocean one last time

LAGUNA BEACH, California --  It was a simple request, a grandmother facing death who only wanted to see the ocean one last time.

It was a request her family was honored to grant.

Now a photo taken as that grandmother's wheelchair rolled into the Pacific Ocean at Laguna Beach is being shared online and touching hearts across the internet.

The photo posted by the unnamed woman's grandson on reddit simply reads, "My grandma wanted to see the ocean one last time before checking into hospice. Her face says it all."

And her face really does say it all.



Visible in the photo is a colostomy bag.  One reddit user asked if the grandson had considered photoshopping the bag out of the picture before posting it online.

The grandson wrote that he had thought about it

"But then I decided that removing it would only detract from the picture," he wrote in the comment thread.  "She spends her days in a wheel chair with that bag, but something as simple as the ocean still brings her immeasurable joy, and why would I want to paint over that bittersweet reality?"

Just 5 hours after posting on imgur the photo had been seen more than 1.5-million times and had more than 19-hundred comments on reddit.