What a nice thing to do! However I couldn't not notice the typical anonymous mob commenting. Some of the comments on that reddit are so mean. How evil can some folks be when someone just went through his wife's passing.
Also, that kind of behaviour is extremely hard to curb. If moderators lay guidelines on what kind of talk is and isn't allowed, people attack the mods and the subreddit for taking away their freedom. If mods are lenient, this and much worse happens. I used to moderate a popular sub (top 100 subs on reddit), and I hate to say that these are mild by reddit standards and about what you should expect on a popular post (the key being "reddit standard"). I'm pretty sure mods are cracking down on these comments, but a mob of people can generate them much faster than a dozen or so volunteers can delete away
I never realized it so clearly, but this is definitely the case for me on HN and probably for more commenters on HN.
In the bigger view, that isn't really something to fix. In fact it might be a good thing - let people make mistakes, be downvoted, see what enlightened people commented and maybe learn.
Lots of comments talking about how it's too little too late and accusing OP of karma-whoring.