86-Year-Old Widower Sees Woman Crying at Grave. Months Later, Woman Sees What He'd Done

By Liz Boselli January 21, 2018 at 2:00pm

Jake Reissig, 86, lost his wife Liz to heart problems in 2014 after being married for 65 years. Since then, he has visited her grave every day.

Before going to the grave to visit his late wife, Reissig always goes to church and then has coffee with one of his nine children.

After that, he would clip roses from his garden and bring them to the grave along with a hose to water the grass around it.

But one day, he noticed a woman crying on a nearby grave. Once she left, Reissig went over to the headstone to take a look.

The name was that of a fallen soldier, United States Air Force Staff Sergeant Joseph Villasenor. He had passed away when he was just 35 years old.

Villasenor had been serving in the military for 16 years and tragically died in a car accident in 2010.

“He was a good kid, he loved children, he was really caring with other people,” his mother Rachel said.

And although he didn’t know them, Reissig wanted to do something kind for his family. So he began watering the grass around the soldier’s grave in addition to his wife’s.

“It was the least I could do for him, you know,” Reissig said. And over time, Villasenor’s family began to notice.

“We noticed his plot was kind of moist, and we were thinking maybe it’s the dew,” his mother Rachel said.

“But looking around, Joe’s was the only one that had dew on it, and I thought this can’t be right.

The family believed that an angel was letting them know that someone was watching out for their son.

The woman who had first caught the widower’s attention crying at the grave was the fallen soldier’s sister.

And soon, they learned that the angel who was keeping the grave beautiful was 86-year-old Jake Reissig.

“It was just incredible to know that a stranger would take that much time and care for our son who he didn’t even know,” Rachel Villasenor said.

While his family missed him incredibly, they were touched by Reissig’s kind gesture. Thanks to people like him, the world isn’t quite so dark as it could be.

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