Mother-Son Dance Raising ALS Awareness Goes Viral After Mother's Passing
By Jason Hall
October 28, 2020
A video of a mother-son dance aimed to raise awareness for ALS has gone viral after the mother's recent passing.
Scooter Hightower said his mother's last wish was to attend her son's wedding in Arrington, Tennessee, FOX 17 News reports. Hightower said he wanted to do something special for his mom and decided to share a mother-son dance to the song "Mothers" by local artist Thomas Finchum.
“I was wanting to do something really special for her because one of the things is when she was diagnosed with ALS, she was waiting for two things in her life to happen, before she wanted to go to the other side so to speak,” Hightower said via FOX 17 News. “She was waiting for her granddaughter to be born, my niece, and she is going on six months now, seven months, and then she was waiting for our wedding. She wanted to be at our wedding.”
Emotional video of Mother-Son dance at local weddingEMOTIONAL 🙏 "By the time this dance was finished there was not a dry eye in the whole place." Video of a mother-son dance at a Middle Tennessee wedding is touching the hearts of thousands. The groom's mom recently passed away after a long battle with ALS. https://bit.ly/35KTO6Q Video: MNF Productions Music: Thomas Finchum Learn More: The ALS Association
Posted by WZTV FOX 17 News, Nashville on Monday, October 26, 2020
In the video, Hightower and his father help his mother out of her wheelchair to share a mother-son dance to the song before being joined by children and a room full of tears.
“My plan was to pick her up out of her chair. She didn’t have the strength to stand. My father helped me get her out of her chair. I held her up. We stood there for probably 30 seconds while I was holding her and dancing and once we sat mom back down in her chair, all of her kids come up to be around her because I wanted it to be a special moment for her. She never really got all of the kids around very often and she always loved to. I wanted to make sure she knew that all of her kids were there with her and loved her.”
Hightower's mother died last week, according to FOX 17 News. She had previously worked as a paramedic in Middle Tennessee for about three decades and was escorted to church by 15 ambulances after her passing.
Hightower said he shared the video to spread awareness about ALS, which currently has no cure. The video has since been liked and shared nearly 500,000 times on Facebook and creates a lasting memory that Hightower said he'll keep with him forever.
You can learn more about ALS here.
Photo: Getty Images